192 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



above ; at the bottom a loathsome of seven eggs and no handsomer 

 clay-pool, slimy-brown and forbidding, spectacle than a large clutch of well- 

 destitute of reed or flag. One side marked sparrow-hawk's eggs can ever 

 of the clay bank ended abruptly in a greet the eyes of a naturalist. The 

 sand wall, and here the martins found keeper was the sort of man to be 

 a home. The birds flitted over the trusted with the news of such a dis- 

 clay-pool, actually struggling together covery, but he evinced no surprise, 

 for each rising fly, and at sunset they The landowner desired to protect his 

 renewed their competition on the coverts, but at the same time he de- 

 meadow above. The land was too poor lighted now and then to see a stately 

 to breed flies, and furnished only the bird in mid-air. Consequently the 

 tiny moths which slept by day among keeper's orders were to shoot all the 

 the blades and grass roots. There kestrels ; never to shoot a sparrow- 

 were seventeen martins' nests in the hawk, but to destroy all the hawks' 

 sand wall, and not one of them con- nests and to lime the old birds at all 

 tained more than three eggs or the nests except those in two outly- 

 young, several of them only holding ing woods, where a few pairs were to 

 two. Contrasting with this haunt, be suffered to nest in peace. These 

 below any shelving sand bank on a orders had now been in force for some 

 southern stream the martins may be ten years, and the kestrel had ceased 

 seen to flit careless of each other's prey, to nest on the estate, though now and 

 The warmer temperature and the plen- then one fell to the gun ; there were 

 teous vegetation in the stream bed three or four pairs of sparrow-hawks 

 render insect food abundant, so that nesting on the edge of the coverts, and 

 every tunnel in the wall's face will the clutches had noticeably increased 

 give five or six young martins to the ever since this policy had been fol- 

 light before September comes round. lowed. The keepers often found 

 It is a long step from the sand-mar- clutches of six, and several of seven 

 tin to the sparrow-hawk, but the same eggs had recently been recorded. This 

 thing holds true. One summer two certainly points to the conclusion that 

 hawks' nests were visited, the only increased scope for foraging has an 

 known ones in a well-wooded region, immediate and marked effect on fe- 

 and situated about three miles apart, cundity. 

 Each contained the magnificent clutch The yellowhammer is another excel- 



