274 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [CHAP. xxxv. 



especially when near their time of hatching. They seem to be 

 quite confident in the forbearance of my boys, who have an inti- 

 mate acquaintance with almost every nest in the neighbourhood 

 of the house, the old bird allowing them to peer closely into her 

 nest, and even to move aside the grass and herbage which conceal 

 it, when they want to see if she is on her eggs. A retriever one 

 day caught an old hen partridge on her nest, but let her go again 

 on my rating him, without doing more damage to her than pulling 

 out some feathers. Notwithstanding this she returned to the 

 nest, and hatched the whole of the eggs the next day. Had she 

 not been so near her time of hatching, I do not suppose that she 

 would have returned again. All birds have the same instinctive 

 foreknowledge of the time of hatching being near at hand, and 

 do not, when this is the case, leave their nest so easily as when 

 disturbed at an earlier period of incubation. Some small birds 

 are much tamer in this respect than others. A bullfinch will 

 often allow herself to be taken off her nest, and replaced again, 

 without showing the least symptom of fear. Indeed, this bird if 

 put into a cage with her nest of young ones will continue to feed 

 them as readily as if her habitation was still in its original situa- 

 tion. Blackbirds also are very unwilling to fly off from their 

 eggs. The common wren, on the contrary, immediately forsakes 

 her nest if it is at all handled and examined before she has laid 

 her eggs. She will abandon it if she merely observes people 

 looking too closely at it ; but when she has commenced to sit I 

 have known her to be caught on her nest, and replaced, and still 

 not forsake it. A small blue-headed tomtit formed her nest this 

 year in a chink in my garden wall, and allowed the children to 

 take out an egg to examine it from underneath her, without 

 leaving the nest. In fact, instead of being frightened at the 

 intrusion of their hands into her little warm, well-feathered 

 domicile, she picked courageously at their fingers, hissing, and 

 spluttering at them, and never seeming inclined to fly off 

 When the young ones were hatched, the activity and perse- 

 verance of the old birds in providing them with caterpillars 

 and blue-bottle flies were perfectly wonderful. They appeared 

 to fly backwards and forwards to their young family every 

 minute of the day, always bringing some insect in their 

 bills. The good done by these little birds in destroying grubs 



