82 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE XEAR 



or on to an adjacent branch, where, with the white 

 down still showing amongst their feathers, they sit 

 with all the wide-eyed solemnity of fledglings who have 

 begun to see the world. An observer with quick- 

 trained eye, walking along the lanes, will " spot " 

 every Robins' nest which he passes. It is not the nest 

 itself which is seen, for that lies snugly and deeply 

 in a hole of the bank, but the patch of dead leaves 

 with which the robin carpets what we may call the 

 hall or lobby, the passage leading to its nest. If the 

 bird sits resolutely, the chances are that she is already 

 covering a brood of nestlings, clad in the black down 

 which precedes their feathers. Does pious tradition 

 still throw its aegis over the robin, as was the case in 

 Suffolk, at any rate, forty years ago, when every 

 village boy understood that while other nests were 

 fair game that of the robin must not be touched ? 

 Now may be noted an amusing eccentricity of the Wren. 

 Before settling down seriously to house-keeping, a 

 pair of wrens will run up quite a number of nests— in 

 the thatch, in the ivy, in an old shed, anywhere. Not 

 one of them is ever completed or intended to be. The 

 real nest we find later, and usually where we least expect 

 it. The House Sparrow has long been collecting the 

 double handful of feathers, paper, string and oddments 

 in general for which he deems the funnel-shaped 

 receiver of the rain-water pipe the meet receptacle. 

 Chaffinches and Greenfinches are hard at work, yet 



