64 WILD NATURE'S WAYS. 



why this pair of birds should deliberately have 

 chosen a situation which necessitated such a 

 radical departure from the architectural style 

 common to their species, seeing that there was 

 plenty of available building room alongside the 

 homes of their neighbours. They certainly secured 

 no advantages, because they had twice the 

 amount of work to do in making their own roof, 

 and ran far more risk of drippings being blown 

 against them than they would had they con- 

 tented themselves with an ordinary site. My 

 brother secured his photograph just as one of 

 the birds was in the act of leaving the nest. 



I have on several occasions found the stock 

 dove breeding in a rabbit burrow, and one day 

 was astonished to discover one nesting on the 

 roof of a summer-house in a wood close to 

 Caterham Valley. A gale of wind had torn the 

 outer half of one of the sheets of zinc which 

 formed the covering of the wooden roof loose 

 and folded it back over the other half, which 

 remained fixed in such a way as to form a 

 kind of pocket, in which the bird made the 

 nest shown in our illustration. 



Birds of prey often exhibit the most sublime 

 tenacity in their love for a favourite old breeding 

 haunt. I know places scattered up and down 

 the country that appear to exercise a positive 

 fascination over falcons,, ravens^ and hawks of 



