Hugh Wormald—Long-tailed Tits



67



birds, though I did not see a nest in 1920. I saw one or two family

parties which had not left the nest for more than a week or two. But

this spring just round here I know four nests, and several other pairs

of birds whose nests I have not found, so that in this locality, at any

rate, their numbers are up to the 1915 standard. I have always wanted

to know how long a time is occupied in building one of their wonderful

nests, and this year I was able to find out how long it took one pair

to build (I daresay the time taken by individual pairs varies). On

Saturday, 12th March, I happened to see a Long-tailed Tit fly into a low

rhododendron, it only remained there a second or two, but since where

birds are concerned I am of an inquisitive disposition, I was obliged

to go and look into the shrub, where, to my delight, I found a minute

piece of moss and lichen, obviously the first foundation of a nest.

Fortunately the site is only 2 ft. 6 in. or so from the ground on the

outside of an outside shrub of a large clump of rhododendrons, and

consequently easily watched. I noticed that when collecting material

the birds were frequently separated by some distance, but when feeding

only, and not actually building or collecting, were always together ;

also that they always fed on the same trees, i.e. two small clumps of

young larch. The nest progressed very slowly at first, three or four

days seeming to make no difference to it in size, although the birds

worked extraordinarily hard. What struck me as remarkable was that

I never saw either of the birds remain at the nest for more than two or

three seconds, and yet in that time they managed to get the material

woven in very tightly and neatly ; how they do it with their absurd

little beaks is amazing ! It was not till the nest had attained the size

of a Chaffinch’s that it began to grow at all quickly ; at this point a

lot of very fine grass leaves were used in the inside, the outside being

composed of moss, lichen, and cobwebs. This was the fourteenth day,

and from now onwards the nest grew much more rapidly, until by

the eighteenth day from the outside the nest appeared finished. The

birds now began to bring feathers only, and must have brought

hundreds ! On the twenty-third day the nest was completed. The first

egg was laid on the twenty-fifth day, and from then onwards I never

saw the birds at all; they forsook my garden entirely, and I feared that

they had forsaken the nest, so on the evening, when there should have



