FAITHFUL BIRDS.
Some correspondence has been published on the fidelity of birds to particular nesting sites ; and I suppose every owner of a garden can quote examples from his own experience. I cannot compete with the multiplicity of examples given by some observers, but I have just one in my garden that may perhaps take a high place in the list of the faithful. A pair of blue tits have built continuously in a slit between the wall— of old brick—and the wood-work of an upper window since 1916, and they may have been there long before that date. Now the blue tit is one of the shorter-lived birds and the nest in this home must be a family tradition. The crevice is so narrow that it is not possible to investigate its depths, and year after year I have searched in vain for any sign that dirt or material is cleared out of the hole. What the state of the interior must be is " a thing imagination boggles at," but large and healthy families are reared in it without fail. Perhaps salvation lies in the fact that it looks south and the sun is a great cleanser, Another example within my own experience is of a hedge sparrow which built for three consecutive years within a few feet of the same place in a privet hedge close to the house, and for three years was victimized by a. cuchoo. The mother bird must have thought it a rule of life that little mothers produce giant children,
W. BEA.= THOMAS.
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