86 
NATURE NOTES 
at the rear of his house and feed on the bread crumbs which are 
daily thrown to the sparrows and starlings which have long 
looked upon the supply as a regular and reliable dole. The 
starlings and sparrows are early morning visitors, and the larger 
pieces which they are unable to dispose of have been picked up 
at a later hour of the day by two wood pigeons, which are big 
birds, and endowed with a large capacity of swallowing bread 
crusts. This has gone on till the beginning of last Spring, 
when the pigeons took a new departure by building a nest in a 
tree which is about twenty feet from a bedroom window. The 
house, it may be stated, is about two miles distant from Kensing- 
ton Gardens, and a little more than a mile from the nearest point 
of Regent’s Park. The proximity of the nest to the window 
has given a favourable opportunity of observing the manner of 
its construction, of seeing the process of hatching the eggs, and 
of rearing the little family from the day of their birth to the time 
when they were able to take their flight under the guidance of 
their parents. 
The writer, when a boy, was familiar with the nest of the 
wood pigeon. As known to him it was invariably placed upon 
and between two branches of a Scots pine, close to the trunk 
of a tree, and the exquisite piece of basket work, which was 
woven of slender twigs, was so thin that the eggs could be seen 
through the fabric, but the whole was so firmly knit together 
that it withstood the strongest gale uninjured. In colour and 
general appearance it looked like a portion of the tree itself, and 
it was a difficult matter and tested the sharp and practised eye 
of youth to discover it. In the present case the nest was 
differently situated, being laid in a cleft of a poplar tree where 
the stem divides into four branches. It had not the look of 
those with which the writer was familiar, being apparently more 
solid in texture, but the mode of its construction was doubtless 
the same as in the case of a nest placed between two boughs 
growing at right angles to the stem of a pine. How the weav- 
ing of the twigs to form the nest was accomplished was a mystery 
to the writer until the Spring of this year, when he saw the thing 
done at a convenient distance for observation. It took both 
birds to do the work ; the hen bird sat and quietly wove one end 
of a twig into the nest while the other end of it was firmly held 
by her mate, who remained standing while the operation was 
carried on. As soon as the one end was secured, the male bird 
surrendered the end he had been holding and at once flew away 
to get another twig ; and when he left, the hen seized the 
unsecured end and wove it in and out till it was made fast and 
formed part of the nest. Having disposed of the twig, the hen 
rested from her task and remained sitting until her mate arrived 
with another, and then the two repeated the operation as before. 
This proceeding went on daily from early dawn, and ceased 
regularly between eight and nine in the morning : the birds 
then departed, nor did they on any occasion put in an appearance 
