134 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



of parental love, for it is absurd to call so fine and 

 ages-deep a passion, to which they are willing to 

 sacrifice their lives, by a more timid name. And 

 this makes the instinctive conduct of the female 

 cuckoo the most repulsive in all nature, since it 

 exploits a noble passion to the destruction of its own 

 object. This criminal subtlety (analogous to that of 

 the plume-hunter who takes advantage of the devotion 

 of birds to their young to approach and kill them the 

 more easily) probably explains why its victims have 

 not yet evolved a defensive organization against it, as 

 they have against birds of prey. 



When I opened the two nesting-boxes, I foimd four 

 dead nestlings in one and two in another, none of 

 them more than two or three days old. This is quite 

 usual with a species that lays so many eggs. Thus 

 spurts the flame and vanishes, and great Nature pays 

 no heed, her heart and brain fixed upon the roaring 

 looms of life. She is right, and the dead ask of her 

 only the burial of the dead. 



Many people will think that the activities of this 

 confined and miniature world are not worth com- 

 memoration. But from this same little community 

 of toers and froers in a suburban garden I received 

 what was in its way a revelation. On November 28th 

 I saw a tomtit come into the garden, fly straight 

 up to the window cocoa-nut where the male oxeye 

 was feeding and drive him off it. Oxeye perched 

 upon the bird-table ; tomtit dashed at him and packed 

 him off to the apple-tree, and only returned to the 

 cocoa-nut when he had seen his larger and much 

 more powerful cousin to the end of the garden. 1 

 took little notice of this incident at the time, until 

 I observed that it was repeated dozens of times with 

 variations right on through the winter. Sometimes it 

 was the female whom this minute, feathered bandit 

 tried to expel. But she generally resented it, and 

 spreading her wings and stretching out her neck 

 opposed a solid defence to the aggressor. But to do 

 so she had to leave the cocoa-nut and tomtit, unable 

 to drive her away by circling round her, would fall 



