LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 5 
But not one small bird could I find nesting in 
the wood. .This set me thinking on a question 
which has vexed my mind for years—How do 
small birds safeguard their tender helpless 
fledgelings from the ants? ‘This wood swarmed 
with ants: their nests, half hidden by the bracken, 
were everywhere, some of the old mounds being 
of huge size, twelve to fourteen feet in circumfer- 
ence, and some over four feet high. As their eggs 
were not wanted the ants were never disturbed, 
and the marvel was how they could exist in such 
excessive numbers in a naked pine wood, which 
of all woods is the poorest in insect life. 
I have said to myself a hundred times that 
birds, especially the small woodland species that 
nest on or near the ground, such as the nightin- 
gale, robin, wren, chiff-chaff, wood and willow 
wrens, and tits that breed low down in old stumps, 
must occasionally have their nestlings destroyed 
by ants; yet I have never found a nest showing 
plainly that such an accident had occurred, nor 
had I seen anything on the subject in books 
about birds; and of such books I had read 
hundreds. 
The subject was in my mind when I received 
evidence from an unexpected quarter that tender 
fledgelings are sometimes destroyed by ants. This 
was in an account of the wren by a little boy 
which I came upon in a bundle of Bird and Tree 
Competition essays from the village schools in 
Lancashire, sent on to me to read and judge from 
