IMITATIVE FACULTY IN BIRDS. 
67 
to investigate every attempted inclosure, no matter how trifling, 
must be our work, till land-filching be no more heard of, and 
•desecration of public rights be a thing of the past. 
Archibald Clarke. 
IMITATIVE FACULTY IN BIRDS. 
lOR many winters past I have been in the habit of feed- 
I ing, as liberally as possible, the birds that come the 
whole year through to my little garden. Those dread- 
ful plagues, the cats, are, so far as it can anyhow be 
done, fenced off by wires with climbing roses trained over them. 
We thus have the birds in large numbers coming to feed and 
seeming to feel quite at home. Robins build in the garden in 
boxes put up for them, and rear their interesting little young 
ones, if I can manage to keep the robinets from wandering to see 
the world too soon. They cannot fly far, or well, so soon as the 
young sparrows, who may be seen in pleasant family groups, 
fluttering their wings to be fed by their parents, but quite able, 
as soon as they get out of the nest, to fly and take care of them- 
selves in every way. 
But the robinets are apt to wander into the next gardens, or 
on to the towing-path, where the cats soon make an end of them. 
Two or three years ago a pair of robins began to build a nest, 
very early, in one of these boxes. A spell of very wet and cold 
weather came on, when the nest was nearly finished, whereupon 
the birds ceased building ; but a month after they began a second 
nest, in another box, and being interrupted by ivy-cutting all 
around them, they went off and built a third nest on the top 
of the wall. But before they had laid an egg the summer 
migrants came over, and one of them laid two eggs in the nest, 
whereupon the robins forsook their nest and built elsewhere a 
fourth nest, where they quietly reared their brood. 
But the most interesting of the birds are the tits. For their 
especial behoof we tie up at the end of long strings pieces of fat, 
half-picked bones, and bread, which hang, often tossed wildly 
about b)- the winds, under the spreading branches of an old 
apple tree. To these pieces three or four kinds of tits come, and 
cling with the greatest ease, usually head downwards, where 
they are spun round, and tossed about in all directions, by the 
gales. It is to everybody a very interesting sight to see them. 
Now the sparrows, which are with us, as everywhere, the 
most numerous of our winter birds, used to sit, perched on 
the rose-bushes, when they had eaten all their own crumbs, 
watching with much care, and apparent envy, the tits feasting 
on the swinging pieces of fat or bread. At length one adventur- 
