146 AN OLD CHALK-PIT 



this one at this moment is that within a radius of twenty 

 yards three pairs of particularly attractive birds have 

 chosen to build their nests. Of these the first is a pair 

 of bulfinches, of whose nest and its local exact locality 

 the less said the better, because people in these parts 

 and elsewhere have a craze for making cage prisoners 

 of the nestlings. The same may be said of the second 

 couple, which are goldfinches ; than which no bird has 

 paid more dearly for wearing gay feathers; it is the 

 favourite booty of the birdcatcher. But there is little 

 risk in describing the third little household, for it is 

 that of a pair of red-backed shrikes the lesser butcher- 

 bird and no fancier will covet their brood. This 

 shrike (Lanius collurio), though it cannot be con- 

 sidered rare in the south, is quite infrequent enough 

 to deserve careful attention. It is, too, a bird of 

 character, sinister, as must be allowed, having earned 

 some infamy from its practice of gibbeting beetles, 

 moths, and even small mammals and reptiles, which it 

 impales on thorns so as to have a convenient larder. 

 But anybody who has watched how ruthlessly a thrush 

 will treat a worm in its efforts to draw it out of the 

 turf, acting on the principle that half a worm is better 

 than no breakfast, will not judge the shrike too harshly 

 in the matter of mercy. 



The hen is sitting closely on five olive-mottled eggs, 

 in a briar bush in the centre of the miniature prairie 

 within the chalk-pit. She is a sad-coloured, un- 

 attractive creature ; but the cock bird, perched aloft 

 on the cliff, and making occasional raids on insect life, 



