96 
NATURE NOTES 
Our Earliest and Latest Songster. — Mr. E. Coxhead may, I think, 
be assured that the thrush (save the nightingale and sedge warbler, both night- 
singing birds) while being the latest night-singer, is also the first to break into 
melody in the morning. These songsters, while prolonging their song during 
June until near midnight, renew it again by two o’clock in the morning. 
41, Heath Street, Hampstead, N. fV. James E. Whiting. 
Aprils, 1902. 
Our Latest Songsters. -Tn reply to E. Coxwell, in the April number, 
the following experiences may be of interest: On July 22, 1901, I sat at my 
open window from 2 to 4 a. m., and the subjoined was the order in which I heard 
the first song or notes of birds — Swallow, 2.45,* cock, 2.55; thrush (cracking 
snail), 3.0: robin, 3.10; blackbird, 3.20 ; flycatcher, 3.30 ; crow, 3.40 ; pigeon(?) 
3.45; wren, 3.50; sparrow, 3.55; magpie, 4.0; blue tit, 4.1. These times are 
correct within a minute or two. The nightingale per se cannot be reckoned in 
such a list. 
On June 8. 1901, I was camping out up the Cam, and owipg to the heavy 
dew and insufficient covering I was unable to get any sleep. A sedge-warbler 
began to sing lustily before i a.m. His song was apparently spontaneous, and 
not due to any irritation on my part, as I was lying quiet and there was a dense 
mist. Even previous to that a moorhen’s harsh note was from time to time 
heard. A thrush was pouring forth song from the top of a willow tree bathed in 
mist before I.30. ^ Mackie. 
Long-Tailed Tits. — For the first time within my recollection a pair of 
long-tailed tits have built in our garden, and it may interest some of your readers 
to hear of their tameness and confidence. The first intimation we had of their 
intentions was one day at dinner, when one of the birds was seen clinging to the 
outside of the window and busily gathering fragments of cobwebs from the corners 
of the frames. For some seconds he was engaged in freeing his toes from a piece 
of wool which had become entangled in them ; having transferred this to his beak 
he flew away. I noted the direction and waited in another window to see where 
the nest was. After a few minutes I saw him fly to a rose bush, the stems of 
which had been tied up against a tall fir-tree. In the centre of this bush I 
noticed the same piece of wool, which was to act as the foundation of the nest 
and which was, as yet, the only indication of a nest. I placed a wisp of wool on 
a neighbouring tree, and before I had gone ten yards both birds flew down and 
began to gather it up and take it for the construction of their home. 
Two mornings afterwards I was awakened by hearing their twittering — 
wonderfully liquid and contented — in my bedroom, and watched one for some 
minutes gathering cobwebs from the window frame and after each flight returning 
to the handle of a Sandow’s Exerciser. Having obtained a beakful of cobwebs 
he flew leisurely out of the window. Since that time they have been constant 
visitors to the greenhouse, coming in and out through a broken pane, and showing 
little or no fear in our presence. 
The exterior of the nest is now completed and will, I hope, escape detection, 
as the rose-tree is now bursting into leaf, and in a few days the nest will be quite 
concealed. 
Another nest I found was so like a chaffinch’s that for some days I was 
deceived, and was much surprised, on a later visit, to find it domed. 
Fylton Rectory, Bristol. A. E. Mackie. 
Wren’s Roosting-nests.— The following incident will, I think, vastly 
strengthen the theory that wrens build extra nests solely as roosting places, and 
not solely through any attempt to mislead their enemies, or through the nests 
being disturbed. Last year a pair of these birds hatched out a brood in a salmon 
tin which was jammed between the branches of a willow tree overhanging our 
pond. The nest on that occasion was very compact, substantial, and lined with 
feathers. 
The young and old birds roosted in this during the winter. Early in the 
spring I cleared the tin of the old nest and was surprised, a fortnight ago, to find 
that a rough, non-fealhered, meagre nest, had been built in it, evidently to supply 
