PAPER AND TWINE
Most birds have young ones now, but some arc still nest-making, and the other day, while I was watching a jackdaw gathering paper from the road— they set great store by paper for their nests—a friend came along and remarked that this reminded him of an experience some years ago when he left a ball of binder twine in an open-fronted shed. He entered the shed one day to find a pair of sparrows shredding the fibres of the twine for nesting material and the following day a blue-tit was at the same game. Soon the twine, which had been discarded because of some fault, was a mass of fluffed-up fibres, and sub- sequently it was discovered that something was trying to unwind the ball, drawing the twine over the side of the bench. This thief was evidently a larger creature, and soon the partly unwound twine lay along the ground and the end disappeared beneath the bench. A rat, it turned out, was hopefully taking the stuff into his hole. In due course the thief might have come out to cut himself a suitable length, but this was more than the owner of the twine was prepared to allow, and he took away the twine and put down poison. Nesting birds were one thing, but rats he wouldn't tolerate!
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