BIRDS 



on account of the birds doing damage to the 

 letters, but still eggs were laid, and had to be 

 taken out every day until sixteen was reached, 

 when the place was abandoned by the birds. 



35. Nuthatch. Sitta casta. Wolf. 



The nuthatch is a fairly common bird in 

 the county, and its grating '• gurra gurra ' may 

 be often heard. Although the nuthatch does 

 not excavate for itself, its well-known habit 

 of closing with mud the entrance to the place 

 in which the nest is placed to the size required 

 for the ingress and egress of the bird, is a 

 very great protection against the interference 

 of birds larger than itself. In an old ash tree 

 in the South Littleton churchyard was a hole 

 of which a pair of nuthatches took possession 

 and narrowed the entrance to keep out a 

 pair of starlings which had inhabited it for 

 several years. The mud used was from a 

 road maintained with lias stone, which when 

 dry was almost as hard as stone itself, and 

 most effectually kept the starlings from en- 

 tering. The entrance to the hole in which 

 the nest of the nuthatch is placed is not 

 always narrowed. A pair of these birds reared 

 their young in an old wall on the premises 

 of the writer, and the entrance was not in 

 any way contracted. 



36. Wren. Troglodytes parvulus, Koch. 

 Locally, ' Jenny Wren.' 



The wren is without exception the most 

 prying little bird we have, and its food ap- 

 pears to consist of very small insects or eggs, 

 which are procured by unceasing and close 

 search in everything that comes in its way 

 either on the ground or near to it, for the 

 wren, unlike the tits and the goldcrests, is 

 never seen feeding in the tops of trees. The 

 inquisitiveness of the bird when on the banks 

 of the Avon sometimes leads to a rather curi- 

 ous ending. Eels are taken in the summer 

 by means of wicker traps, large baskets locally 

 ' putcheons,' which are taken out of the water 

 in the autumn and laid by to dry previously 

 to being stored away for the winter. These 

 are found almost invariably to contain wrens 

 which have entered the aperture for the eels, 

 and have failed to find the way out. 



A very extraordinary choice of a place for 

 its nest is sometimes made by this little bird. 

 A pair of trousers, belonging to a man who 

 had been engaged in the village of South Little- 

 ton, had been hung up to dry on a line and left 

 there some time. When they were taken off 

 the line a small bird flew out, which proved 

 to be a wren which had constructed a nest in 

 them. The garments were immediately re- 

 placed on the line and from the nest a brood 



of wrens was successfully reared and took 

 flight. 



37. Tree-Creeper. Certhia familiaris, Linn. 

 Although the tree-creeper is not rare it 



is far from numerous, and its nest is but sel- 

 dom seen. Three nests examined by the 

 author were in very dissimilar places. One 

 was in a crack in an old mud wall forming 

 the back of a cowshed in the corner of a pas- 

 ture field, and was composed principally of 

 red cow-hair. The second was placed in the 

 fork of a large pear tree, just where two large 

 vertical arms separated a little, and then united 

 above leaving a slit below. The third one 

 was attached to the inside of a piece of loose 

 bark on a pollard withy by the side of the 

 Avon near Cleeve Prior. It was discovered 

 by the bird flying out. Some weeks after- 

 wards the piece of bark was torn down, when 

 the young had evidently flown. The nest 

 was found snugly occupying a recess inside the 

 bark, and was formed principally of what ap- 

 peared to be bits of stick, which proved on 

 examination to be the dead and dried up suc- 

 culent points of climbing ivy, which, by ex- 

 posure, had become extremely light and fragile. 

 It was lined with fine fibre and rabbit's fur. 



38. Pied Wagtail. MotacUla luguhris, Tem- 



minck. 

 The pied wagtail though a common, can 

 hardly be called an abundant bird with us, and 

 appears to breed less frequently than formerly. 

 Early in the autumn, however, flights consist- 

 ing chiefly of immature birds retire in the 

 evening to the osier beds on our streams to 

 roost, though certainly not in such numbers 

 as in past years. Later in the autumn, or at 

 the approach of winter, small companies of 

 this wagtail, apparently on migration, appear, 

 as they are only observed for a short time. 



[White Wagtail. MotacUla alba, Linn. 



I can only say of this species that I have 

 seen it by the side of the Avon near Stratford, 

 and do not doubt its occasional appearance in 

 Worcestershire. Mr. Whitlock has discovered 

 that it is a regular visitor to the Trent valley, 

 though in quite limited numbers ; and its 

 occurrence by the side of the Severn and its 

 tributaries may be confidently predicted.] 



39. Grey Wagtail. MotacUla melanope, Pallas. 

 This, the most elegant in form and most 



interesting in its movement of all our wagtails, 

 is usually an autumn visitor to our county, but 

 has never, to my knowledge, been known to 

 breed. In only one instance, in a wide dis- 

 trict in the midland counties, has this bird 

 been seen in breeding plumage, namely, in the 

 49 



