MAY 



A Marked Swallow A Snake in Eden Life by the EJver 

 The Bird and the Garden Bee and Blossom Where Shake 

 speare was English Lafer Migrants A Hereford Wood 



I. 



the garden of a cottage, off a lane leading uphill 

 irom the village street, is an out-bouse peculiarly 

 pleasing to swallows. One pair nested there for 

 four consecutive years, perhaps more ; but only the 

 four are surely attested ; and one year they brought up 

 four consecutive broods. In a later year the place, which 

 is most persistently and affectionately watched, was the 

 scene of a triangular duel fought between three species of 

 birds, all seeking congenial spring nests. For many years 

 a pair of swallows have built and bred in a shed standing 

 at the corner of a cottage garden in the Home Counties, 

 as the swallows too might name them. They are awaited 

 each year with vivid expectation, and the shed is kept 

 closed against the competition of less popular birds, till 

 the swallows are seen. This year, owing to a temporary 

 absence of the cottage dweller, the shed was opened earlier, 

 lest the pair should arrive and feel the inhospitality of the 

 shut window. This was on April 21. At once a watchful 

 wren, who also delights in the shed, entered and began 

 to build in what was left of last year s swallow s nest. 

 The Jenny wren was the first competitor in the field. 



Unhappily possession did not put nine points of the 

 law in her favour. Her work was taken over, and she 

 herself evicted, by a pair of sparrows who began to 



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