At Home with Wild Nature 



I was astonished to find a clutch of eggs lying upon a 

 rather extensive pavement of pebbles, collected and 

 carried by a ringed plover from the bed of a dry brook 

 to a patch of light green grass some distance away. It 

 is rather puzzling to decide whether the pebbles were in 

 this instance used liberally as ordinary nest-lining 

 materials or in a conscious attempt to hide the eggs by 

 the effects of harmonization. As the pebbled pavement 

 measured over a foot in diameter I am strongly inclined 

 to favour the latter theory. 



On the Continent I have noticed that when avocets 

 breeding on sandy ground return to the nest in wet 

 weather individual birds frequently stand on one leg 

 and shake the sand first off one foot and then the other 

 before sitting down. This action is clearly due to an 

 association of ideas, for if the sand were not dislodged 

 some of it, during the considerable hustling that takes 

 place in order to get the eggs into the warmest position 

 under the bird's body, would inevitably work its way 

 to the bare parts between the feather tracts and thus 

 cause considerable irritation. 



Just as in the human world, some members of the 

 animal kingdom seem incapable of knowing when to 

 leave well alone. One day I was out nest-hunting with 

 my friend Mr. Charles Atkins, a keen ornithological 

 neighbour, when he suddenly stopped and began to gaze 

 at something on the trunk of a large tree standing on 

 the side of a much-used footpath. The object of 

 interest proved to be a very beautiful chaffinch's nest 

 supported by three or four small sprouting branches. 



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