68 WILD LIFE AT HOME. 



chipping from another blackbird's nest and put it 

 in. Two days afterwards I visited her and found 

 five hungry little creatures in the nest, one of 

 which was a wee bit bigger and stronger than the 

 rest. We fixed up our tree-trunk, and very soon 

 had a series of studies of her feeding her children, 

 one of which is reproduced on page 67. 



Two days after this my brother happened to be 

 passing, and thought he would take a peep at the 

 nest to see how things were going forward, as he 

 heard a blackbird's alarm note ringing out near the 

 spot. To his annoyance, the cat which had given 

 us so much trouble elsewhere leapt out from the 

 hedgerow immediately beneath the nest, and the 

 young birds were quite cold and weak. He re- 

 turned half an hour afterwards, to find the mother 

 on the nest, but next day the chicks were all dead. 

 This was on the 20th of April, and what follows 

 is extremely interesting on account of the certainty 

 with which it proves the short-lived character of 

 a bird's grief, and the limited nature of the wander- 

 ings of a species. I found the same bird on the 

 30th sitting on a clutch of four eggs not fifty 

 yards away in the same hedgerow. On the 12th 

 of May two of her young ones had come out, and 

 she ultimately succeeded in bringing off all four in 

 safety. Her first nest had been in a very exposed 

 place, and she was extremely shy whilst brooding ; 

 but her second was situated in a very thick bit of 

 whitethorn, and she sat so closely upon it that I 



