A WOODMAN S HINT 155 



A wood may be silent and inhuman ; but a clearing in 

 a wood is seldom anything but cheerful in sight and 

 sound. The authors of such cheerfulness were cutting 

 undergrowth, and making much of this coppice wood 

 into faggots. The small birds watched them, you might 

 say, with gratitude, but impatience. They were doing 

 them a double favour, letting in light and air, and pro 

 viding them with nesting sites. Within quite a small 

 clearing we found in all five nests : three wrens , one 

 hedge-sparrow s, all built into the upright faggots ; and 

 one robin s nest delightfully hidden in a hole of one of 

 the stools from which the coppice wood had been 

 cleared. The bird had laid dead leaves and moss in so 

 subtle a gradation that you could scarcely tell where the 

 nest proper began and the strewn leaves with the moss 

 or the stool ended. The blessed phrase &quot; adaptation to 

 environment&quot; or camouflage was perfectly illustrated. 

 Well, faggots are cheap and easily come by. If three or 

 four, perhaps even one, were stood on end in a moder 

 ately private place in any garden, it would be a surer 

 attraction than any bird box; and attract a greater 

 variety of species. 



Some weeks earlier than this experience in the wood 

 I had evidence of the same sort of general preference for 

 a degree of openness. Nearly all birds hate stuffiness. 

 Even in a hedge of no great thickness they build most 

 often just, and only just, behind the fringe of leaves. Old 

 yew hedges and many evergreen trees popular in gardens, 

 and indeed Lombardy poplars, are often totally dis 

 regarded on account of stuffiness and dust. Now this is 

 an article in the creed of the keeper of one of the best of 

 the English reserves. A good deal of it is covered with 

 thick sedge which some might think attractive to water 

 side birds. It is within limits ; but no single act has so 



