Bird-Nesting.
Although it grieves me to see the damage done by bird-nesters, I cannot help feeling a slight sympathy for the schoolboy who goes bird-nesting. Now, with the lengthening days and the nesting season well on its way, boys are out along the lanes and across fields far from their homes. Already some of them have discovered the carrion crow's mass of twigs and wool and the grass bowls of thrush and blackbird. I think a man who goes prying into the nests of birds discovers very " little that is new, and does a lot of harm if' the birds are of a rare species; but I remember the joy I had in finding the nest of the curlew and the hours I spent a month or two later wandering a peat moss to locate a nightjar when I was a boy. Fortunately I lived in a thinly populated'district, and bird-life there was rarely disturbed. Here one does not need to look for the nest of a bird in a hedge. The track of its visitors soon advertises the site, and guarantees that the bird will fail to raise a brood until the undergrowth is thicker and the, new nest is therefore harder to find.
Previous page
