A WOODMAN S HINT 155 



rabbits. But it must be confessed that the bird is a born 

 cannibal. 



The worst enemies of birds are other birds, but the 

 cannibalism is seasonal and brief. Many of the birds of 

 prey nest rather early, and are only deadly when they 

 have hungry young. When in flaming June the screen 

 of leaves is scarcely penetrable to any eyes, and the grass 

 and corn are lush, most nesters are tolerably safe. 

 Almost all the visiting warblers are late enough to con 

 ceal their nurseries, and our own birds bring complete 

 families to birth at the second and third attempts. The 

 early losses and later successes of the long-tailed tits, 

 who build the loveliest but not the best concealed of 

 nests, had been strangely illustrated in my experiences of 

 the season. All the first attempts failed : the nests were 

 harried either by boy or bird. In spite of them we saw, 

 nevertheless, large families of these daintiest cf birds 

 playing in company about the bullfinch hedges through 

 out the autumn and winter ; and as frosts were not too 

 severe, they added to the population of the next year. 



The grass slopes above Woolacombe in North Devon 

 are very lovely in the time of the master flower of June, 

 the wild rose ; but by the sea the sweet dwarf Burnet 

 rose takes the place of the dog and field roses of inland 

 places- The grass hillside is full of flower. Contrariwise, 

 some of the gardens are almost empty. There is one 

 pitched on the steep hillside above the cliffs, much too 

 narrow and rocky for the making of any sort of bed. In 

 fact it possesses just one flower-patch which has grown 

 up by chance among the gorse and out of the rock. It 

 consists of spikenard, or, in more usual idiom, spurred 



