MAY 119 



and Miss E. L. Turner's slides, explained by Mr. 

 Pycraft, revealed some very remarkable traits in bird 

 life. The pied wagtail, which built its nest in a flower- 

 pot in a greenhouse, might have been reckoned secure 

 against disturbance from without, for access to her 

 retreat could only be had through a drain pipe ; yet a 

 cuckoo marked her ingress, made its way into the 

 greenhouse, and there was the young cuckoo estab- 

 lished among the wagtail's brood. 



Still more extraordinary was the behaviour of a 

 blue titmouse, as described by Mr. W. Farren. The 

 female was sitting hard upon her eggs; her mate 

 brought her so many caterpillars that she could eat 

 no more, and refused to take any ; whereupon 

 he directed his attention to a brood of young hedge- 

 sparrows in a nest a few yards distant from his own 

 establishment, and Mr. Farren succeeded in photo- 

 graphing him in the act of feeding the nestlings of a 

 species so little akin to his own as Accentor modularis. 

 The good Samaritan himself did not take a more 

 liberal view on the question Who is my neighbour ? 



All right-minded persons love birds, though too 

 many manifest their affection by robbing their nests 

 and making collections of their corpses. Far more 

 creditable and exciting is the pursuit opened out by 

 modern photography by providing means of recording 

 the actions and interpreting the characters of all kinds 

 of wild fowls. 



