on the Nesting of the Black Redstart. 331


two Redstarts together during the winter, even though they may

have been the best of friends and have even paired, during the

preceding summer. Unless the two birds are exactly evenly

matched in strength one will assuredly slay the other; so Tites

and the new arrival spent the winter apart. I11 the spring I

caught up the female and caged her for a few days for inspection.

The more I looked at that hen the more convinced I was that,

if the correct environment were provided, she would prove a

breeder. As mentioned above, I had already decided that the

required environment would have to include a nest-box in a dark

corner under a roof and I, therefore, selected a quiet corner of

the old walled-garden aviary which was provided with a small

shed about seven feet high. In the furthest corner of this shed a

flat wooden ledge had been nailed up years ago, and on this

ledge (which is shown in the photo) two South American

Thrushes, which I believe to have been hens of two different

species, had constructed a mud foundation for a nest. All that

remained to do was to fix the nest-box under this ledge.


I first introduced Tites to these breeding quarters and,

later in the spring, I caged the female and hung up the cage in

the shed. I regret to say that Tites did not behave at all nicely

to his prospective bride. His tail quivered with fury like the

trembler of an induction coil : he perched on the top of the cage

and in unmistakeable and unparliamentary (?) language told the

lady what he thought of her and what her fate would be. But

the lady simply gazed at him placidly for well she knew—not

only by intuition but by actual experience—that, for all his

truculence, Tites would yet grovel at her feet; you see this was

not her first experience of matrimony. On the fourth day I saw

Tites talking to his partner quite politely, and then—and not

before then—I opened the cage door. The next thing was to

procure a counterfoil for Tites. There seems to be a conven¬

tional theory that the ideal method is to isolate each breeding

pair of birds in a separate aviary, but a little reflection will

convince us that this is a fundamental error. An insectivorous

bird usually arrives at its nesting-station after along and arduous

migratory flight, during which food has been scarce, and almost

at once enters upon a long and arduous struggle with various



