20 JULY 1951, Page 13

COUNTRY LIFE

HAVE known some queer nesting sites in my time and on my land. A pair of linnets once nested in the folded secrecy of one of my dwarf Irish yews. Willow-warblers brought up a family in the straw under a blackcurrant bush, and fed it by passing to and fro through the wire mesh of the fruit-cage. Tits have built in a water-spout ; robins in a hole of my only stone wall ; flycatchers in a sparrows' nest above a water-butt, and goldfinches spun their gossamer fabric on the branch-tip of a sapling walnut, where it was more conspicuous than the leaves.