At Home with Wild Nature 



At the moment of writing this chapter on the West- 

 morland fells there is a starling hanging dead by one leg 

 outside her nesting hole in the wall of an old barn close 

 by. Her foot has become inextricably entangled in a 

 crevice at the mouth of her nesting hole, and it is 

 pathetic to watch her mate feeding his little family 

 unhelped and uncheered. 



Some years ago thousands of people stopped to gaze 

 at the body of a house sparrow dangling outside its nest 

 in the heart of the City of London. A piece of string 

 had been utilized in the construction of the untidy little 

 home of straws, and the female, in entering or leaving, 

 had so entangled her body in the bit of treacherous 

 twine that she became a hopeless prisoner, and died 

 gibbeted in the wind. An almost identical accident 

 recently befell a London pigeon. 



Not many years ago whilst examining the chicks 

 in a yellow wagtail's nest I discovered a member 

 of the family strangled by a long fibrous blade of 

 grass, one end of which was twisted round its neck 

 and the other round the leg of another member of the 

 family. 



Upon approaching the nest of a chaffinch I had found 

 some time previously in a weather-beaten thorn bush 

 growing on a bare hillside, I was puzzled to see something 

 dangling in the wind a few inches below the structure. 

 It proved to be the body of one of the chicks suspended 

 by a long horse-hair, inextricably fixed in the lining of 

 the nest at one end, and twisted round the left ankle of 

 the fledgeling at the other. The unlucky bird had no 



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