Page:Bird Life Throughout the Year (Salter, 1913).djvu/140

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
102
BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

may be done by artful blending of moss, wool and lichens, that of the bullfinch shows what a high level may be attained by the use of such unpromising material as fine twigs and slender roots. The willow wren and chiffchaff build the dome-shaped structures which have led country boys to name them "oven birds," with the advantage that a roof shelters the feather-bed upon which repose their fragile pink eggs. Then what various tastes are shown in choice of site. The flycatcher builds on the horizontal branch of the pear-tree trained along the garden wall, the nightingale in the drift of dead oak-leaves at the foot of the honeysuckle, while the tree-creeper has found that there is just room to squeeze in its nest between the old ivy-stem and the tree-trunk to which it clings. The great-tit has a weakness for disused pumps and country letter-boxes; the marsh-tit excavates in the touch-wood of the willow stump, while the blue-tit, sitting deep in the hollow gate-post, when investigated, hisses in a series of explosive puffs, but refuses to budge.

But for variety of small birds commend us to some quiet nook in the West Midlands where, by grassy lane, past hop-yard and bluebell copse, one reaches some sequestered orchard of old fruit-trees, their gnarled limbs green with moss or grey with lichen, and abounding in those holes so dear to many birds when on nesting bent. A nightingale hops out from the hedge,