50 Woods ide. 



What a collection is here! A mass of feathers and moss 

 carefully lined with hair, in which are a number of eggs. 

 We count one, two, three, . . . eleven beautiful pinkish 

 white eggs. What is that at the back of the hole, spitting 

 and hissing as you put in your fingers ? It is the mother 

 bird, who pecks you repeatedly, and will not leave the nest 

 in spite of your interruption. You withdraw your hand; she 

 ruffles up her feathers and settles down upon her eggs again 

 at once. Timid little birds enough at ordinary times, they 

 display an immense amount of pluck when sitting. 



What useful little creatures these soft-billed denizens of 

 our woods and gardens are ! Watch one on an apple or pear 

 tree in very early spring ; it clings to the rough bark and 

 looks keenly into every cranny and at every bud ; the number 

 of stoppages it makes will give one a notion of the work it 

 does, as it clears out some noxious grub or insect every time 

 it pauses. In this hawthorn hedge there is quite a family 

 of birds tits, robins, wrens and finches all hard at work. 

 The hawthorn looks in a bad way : the twigs are almost bare, 

 whilst the leaves that are left are rolled up. Here and there, 

 too, large masses of silky web are conspicuous, stretching from 

 branch to branch. Carefully open one of these webs. A large 

 number of leaden-coloured caterpillars, with large, round, 

 black spots come tumbling out not in ones and twos, but in 

 dozens. There must be many thousands of caterpillars in 

 this hedge, and yon crab-apple tree is covered with similar 

 webs. This is one of our most destructive caterpillars, and 

 produces a small grey or whitish moth, covered with tiny 

 black dots, which is sometimes known as the Small Ermine 

 moth. It is the caterpillars of this moth that spin their 

 webs on the apple trees in our gardens, and do so much 

 harm to them. 



