SOME BIRD NOTES 237 



Yarmouth scarcely a martin's nest (owing to the bullying of 

 sparrows, etc.), but in an adjoining village seven nests new to 

 me are this year affixed to one house front. 



" Not far from Caister some swallows have been nesting 

 annually for some years in a tea-saucer, which has been 

 repeatedly taken down from a shelf for inspection. In the 

 Hospital School grounds, just above the boys' heads, is a 

 knot-hole in an old tree. Into the cavity wriggled a pair of 

 starlings, and by some means made it conveniently comfort- 

 able to raise a family. A pair of swallows are building for 

 the third season in the boys' lavatory within easy reach of 

 the smallest urchin. At Caister a pair of English and a pair 

 of red-legged partridges are nesting amicably within a very 

 short distance of each other. JOHN K NOWLITTLE." 



In reply to this " W. G. C." wrote as follows : 



" SIR, Supplementing the curious nesting places of 

 swallows published in your columns, I would mention the 

 nest to be found beneath Aldeby Swing Bridge (over the 

 river), continually subject to the rattling and rolling of the 

 trains abovehead. . . . There is generally a nest in the 

 letter-box of the ink factory at Barsham ; and for many 

 years a ' blue-jimmy ' (blue tit) used the village wall-box at 

 Kilverstone for purposes of nidification. Two or three years 

 ago a brood of these birds was safely reared in a 

 crack in an axle of one of the staunches of the Little Ouse. 

 At the same time there were eight youngsters in a nest built 

 in a crack between two bricks from which the mortar had 

 been weathered away in a wall in Thetford. It certainly 

 was a mystery how the plump little parent tits squeezed in. 

 Only this year, a friend found a blue tit's nest in a hollow 

 gatepost, and with a zeal which I thought mistaken, he slit 

 the post down the middle until the nest was reached. In 

 spite of this the parent bird refused to leave the eggs, which 

 were on the point of being hatched, allowing herself to be 

 lifted off the nest without any sign of fear. A still more 

 curious instance of the nesting of the blue tit has been pub- 

 lished in the Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich 

 Naturalists' Society ', wherein it is recorded that about 1819 a 

 man named Camplin climbed a gibbet in the parish of 

 Wareham, upon which had been executed a person named 

 Bennett for the murder of his master, John Filly, the trial 

 taking place at Thetford. In the head of the skeleton a blue 

 tit had built its nest, and the terrified family of nine or ten 

 flew out on being disturbed. 



" In the Gallows Pits, Thetford criminals were formerly 



