186 JULY 



neighbouring site, quieter, and more conventional. Per 

 haps they will nest again in the cottage next year. Among 

 the most curious sites I have known was the end of a 

 bookshelf, where two tomes were missing, and in this 

 cottage, as new as it is pleasant to the eye, a bookcase is 

 about to be fixed ; and perhaps space may be left at the 

 end of one shelf for what Lewis Carroll used to call 

 Litter-ature. Robins certainly abound within close 

 range ; for now that silence has fallen on the nightingales, 

 who had been singing in rivalry loud enough to disturb 

 sleep, their songs hold the field with only the jenny 

 wren s in competition; and the robin s, if the less 

 emphatic, is the more constant. 



Another red-breasted bird is one of the most faithful 

 visitors to the lawn ; and it may be taken as evidence of 

 the value of propinquity that one dweller in the cottage, 

 though an interested watcher of birds, had never before 

 realised that the brown linnet, if a male and if spring has 

 come, boasts a breast that may vie with robin, chaffinch, 

 or bullfinch. The breast, as indeed the front of the 

 sconce, is always red, but the film over it is only rubbed 

 off after the winter. The red breast is like a flower that 

 has cast off its wrapping. 



The birds feeding before the cottage windows display 

 their puckishness as well as their charms. One day when 

 both crumbs and birds were numerous, a hen sparrow, 

 busy with a large lump, caught sight of another in a black 

 bird s beak. She left her own meal, hopped up to her 

 neighbour, and with deft impertinence removed the 

 bread from his mouth. The blackbird fluffed out his 

 feathers in sulky and speechless offence, to which no one 

 paid attention, least of all the sparrow. She hopped 

 away with the morsel, dropped it carelessly, and returned 

 to her proper meal. Even the mouse, shunting this way 



