GARDEN WARBLER 



when mated are two of the most devoted little lovers it would be 

 possible to find in an English woodland. 



No matter how many nests I found, it always gave me delight 

 to wait until the owner returned, and to watch her go to her home, 

 carefully turn the eggs with her beak, and then, tenderly stepping 

 down, she placed her feet at the side of the little cup-shaped interior, 

 and shuffled and turned until all the eggs were comfortably settled 

 beneath her warm breast. Overhead, lost in the apple-blossom, 

 her mate would sing, and if, as sometimes happened, he caught 

 some insects for her, she always saw him coming, and rising in 

 her nest she fluttered her wings with joy as he approached and 

 gave this gift of love with true and beautiful tenderness. 



It is not to be wondered at, then, that I look upon the Garden 

 Warbler as one of my best woodland friends, for it was his free song 

 that helped to make me love the spring, with its birds, its flowers, 

 and its music. It was the Warblers, when in my young days the 

 veil of Nature was lifted, that first greeted me with their songs, and 

 made me resolve to look beyond the veil and search for Birdland's 

 hidden mysteries. 



I have written of that orchard in other works, and I hoped to 

 do so again ; but now the old haunts of my childhood days are but 

 memories, sweet pages as it were in a big book that I shall never 

 regret having read, for the leaves in Nature's great volume are 

 different, every one, yet all live in the mind, and remain as a tale 

 that is told but not forgotten. Whenever I hear this Warbler's 

 song, or see the nest a fragile little structure as I have done 

 in several parts of these islands, my thoughts go back to the old 

 home, and those joyous days, when the birds and the gay flowers, 

 the blossoms and the blue sky, spoke to me of all that is real in 

 the world, and taught me the full story of the great and beautiful 

 spring. 



The male Garden Warbler is a devoted parent. We once found 



17 c 



