188 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



nests, of slighter construction than the one they 

 actually occupy, round a pond, and Plovers often 

 scratch out and prepare little hollows in which they 

 never lay their eggs. 



Some Sand Martins lay their eggs upon quite an 

 elaborate bed of straws and feathers, whilst others 

 in the same bank deposit theirs upon the scantiest 

 lining of straws only. Individual nests belonging 

 to birds of the same species vary considerably in 

 point of size without any reference whatever to 

 the character of the situation occupied, as the most 

 casual glance at a number of House Martins' nests 

 will prove. 



In regard to hiding their nests, individual birds 

 differ greatly. Last spring my brother and I 

 found a Blackbird's in a hedge merely by the 

 fact that the bird in building it had carelessly left 

 a conspicuous trail of the materials she had used 

 from the outside of the bush right up to the very 

 nest. A schoolboy would have detected it through 

 this slovenly piece of workmanship quite thirty 

 yards away, as was doubtless the case, for the 

 eggs did not remain long in it. On the other 

 hand, within a hundred yards of it, I found the 

 most cunningly-hidden Blackbird's nest that I have 

 ever seen. I was looking round a friend's garden, 

 when I came upon an old black horse's tail which 

 had been thrown into a yew tree and lodged near 

 the trunk, and about five feet from the ground. 

 The thing looked curious, and, with an idea of 

 examining it more closely, I seized the lower end 

 and gave it a tug. To my surprise, a hen Black- 

 bird fluttered out in great alarm, and I discovered 

 that she had a nest and eggs on a branch close to 

 the bole of the tree and quite behind the horse's 

 tail, which, whilst forming a kind of curtain (it 



