A Double Nest
In a child's bedroom in Oxford a robin has built a nest, and brought up a family, in a bookcase in a space left at the end of the shelf. This in itself is no oddity. For example, I remember a nest in a bookcase in the study of a Rugby schoolmaster. What is odd about this nest is that it is double. A second small, tidy, neat nest has been built alongside the main nest, and in this annexe the cock bird rests in fond contiguity to the hen. It is, however, quite difficult to distinguish cock from hen in this species, and the hen is one of the very few that sings a real song. We have no pair in England that can rival the South African species, which sing a sort of catch, the hen finishing the bar begun by the cock. Among strange nesting places an account has reached me of a nut-hatch that built in a pipe from which the wire filter had been wrenched aside. The selection of such a site is most unusual. It was not well-chosen. A storm of rain was as fatal to the nut-hatches as to the almost proverb:al sanguineus passer.
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