284 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLA Y 



The greater number of these photographs of 

 nests ' compose ' naturally into a picture. Some 

 seem almost too perfect ; yet no one who has found 

 such nests himself will fail to realise their truth. 

 Take, for example, a coot's nest, on the top of a 

 single tussock, with the delicate, upright flowers, 

 stems of the grass, rising straight above it ; while 

 the lower leaves fall off like bending sheaves of corn. 

 The difference of nest position and surroundings is 

 shown in the two examples of the moorhen's nest. 

 One, in early spring, set among the bare alder stumps, 

 the other a common example in a bed of upright 

 water flags. The broad-bladed leaves rise vertically 

 all round it, but some have been crushed down to 

 form the nest, and others bent horizontally across 

 to screen it from view above.* The wonderful 

 beauty of hawthorn foliage is best shown in the 

 pictures of the blackbirds, greenfinches, and hedge- 

 sparrows ; of the leaves of the oak, in that of the 

 turtle-dove. The bullfinch's nest is embowered in 

 hawthorn and wild-rose leaves. The reed-bunting's 

 nest gives the wealth of growth in the damp ditches 

 crowded with rank grass, nettle, and lovely stems 



* Mr Kearton informs the writer that this particular nest was so well con- 

 cealed from the view of anyone looking at it from above, that half-a-dozen 

 country boys, who were wading about in the marsh looking for nests, failed to dis- 

 cover it. 



