Some Curious Notes from My Diary 



surprise a blue tit industriously feeding a family of young 

 song thrushes in a nest built in a climbing rose on one 

 of the walls of her house, and as the bird persisted in 

 doing so had it photographed in the act. 



Birds are almost human in many respects. In- 

 dividuals of different species sometimes show an inno- 

 cent inquisittveness not only in regard to the household 

 affairs of members of their own species, but those of 

 others with which they have nothing whatever in 

 common. 



Whilst waiting for a redwing to come back to her 

 nest on the Dovre Fell in Norway one morning a male 

 blue throat a little bird not unlike our English robin 

 came along and critically examined the nest and its con- 

 tents, but instantly took its departure when I attempted 

 to turn the handle of my kinematograph camera and 

 record his inquisitive demeanour. 



I have known both house sparrows and tree sparrows 

 show considerable interest in young cuckoos, in the rear- 

 ing of which they had taken neither lot nor part. 



In the summer of 1914 I recorded in moving pictures 

 a member of the former species that came again and 

 again to stare at a newly-fledged cuckoo reared by a pair 

 of white wagtails near to the town of Haarlem, and 

 whilst the writing of this book was in progress I wit- 

 nessed precisely the same kind of inquisitiveness on the 

 part of a female house sparrow. I was intently watch- 

 ing a young cuckoo that had just left the nest of a pair 

 of hedge sparrows being fed by its foster parents, when 

 the house sparrow came along and began to admire him 



MS 



