A YEAR'S NESTS. 133 
pearing with kaleidoscopic effect. It was a charming picture of 
careless joyous life, irresistibly recalling Coleridge’s lines : 
“ O happy living things, no tongue 
Their beauty could declare ; 
A spring of love gushed from my heart-, 
And I blessed them unaware.” 
We did not find a robin’s nest. This was somewhat strange, 
as there were several robins about the garden, including a 
specially tame one who used to come close to us and pick up 
crumbs when we were having tea on the lawn. On the other 
hand, we found a far rarer thing, a nightingale’s nest, with three 
young ones, carefully concealed in a hedge, close to the ground. 
Starlings built in the hollows of old apple trees ; when the eggs 
were hatched the incessant chattering of the young soon betrayed 
their whereabouts. Sparrows’ nests were, of course, plentiful. 
One ingenious sparrow built in a cavity of an old wall, the 
entrance to which was so small that a hand could not be inserted, 
and unless the wall were pulled down the nest was safe from all 
intrusion. In the field and orchard were four ground nests — two 
larks’ and two ' meadow-pipits’. One of the latter — with six 
fledglings — was discovered just before the grass was cut for hay, 
and in order to save it from disturbance, a fairly large space all 
round it was left uncut till the birds had flown. We visited this 
nest now and then, and found great pleasure in watching the six 
fluffy little things, as they lay there with gaping beaks and heav- 
ing breasts, in the full blaze of the June sun. We wondered 
how they could stand such intense heat, their only protection 
being a tall, wavy tuft of grass that bent over the nest like the 
hood of a cradle. They throve, however, and grew apace, till 
the nest could hardly contain them, in fact, they only just fitted 
in ! At last we felt that if one of them did not soon make a 
move there would be general suffocation, so we gently pushed 
the biggest out of the nest. To our amused surprise he crept 
away and in a few minutes the others all followed his example, 
and never returned to the nest again ! We always feel that we 
gave these little meadow-pipits their start in life. 
Several nests were only discovered late in the season, long 
after the young birds had flown. Among these was a lovely 
little structure made of wool and thistle-down, firmly planted in 
the fork of a young pearmain apple-tree on which still hung a 
few deep crimson fruits. The materials of the nest and the 
presence of thistles in its neighbourhood led us to suppose it 
must be that of a goldfinch, that bird’s penchant for thistle seeds 
being a well-known fact. Finally, we must not omit to mention 
that two pairs of swallows built quite late in the summer, under 
the eaves of a roof recently erected over the front part of the 
house. The nests were made entirely of clay, beautifully 
modelled, and in some wonderful way glued firmly to the smooth 
surface of the stuccoed wall. It was delightful to watch these 
birds as they circled gracefully to and fro near the nests, and at 
