Queer Nests
It is not too early in the year for the discovery of odd nests ; for example, in the garden of a Lincolnshire rectory a wren has built within the ample folds of a cabbage which had been allowed to grow since last summer. So do we derive unearned increment from our sins of omission. A quite delightful collection of queer nests is described in a bird's nesting book (Bird Watching Pays. Collins. 7s. 6d.), published this week by two naturalists—photographers who have worked largely in Wales and have had the chance of seeing the sort of bird that is on the whole rarer in the East. Perhaps the oddest that they have photographed is a raven's nest built at the top of a shaft alongside a pulley wheel. The birds seem to have had a liking for the mine, for they built on another occasion on a yet more precarious site close to the mouth of the mine. The wren has a certain eminence in the habit of building quaint nests, partly for the reason that they build so many more nests than other birds. The cock is at times possessed with an ecstatic passion for running up a cheap house. I watched one, which sang furiously in the intervals, make a plausible dome within two days. Like most of these cock nests it was never lined and never used ; but the architect had tremendous joy in the making.
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