Birds-nesting Squirrels Ground-nesting birds have many enemies : scythes, cutters,
rollers, wet weather, vermin and birds of prey (including rooks). Squirrels, occasionally the brown as well as the grey, . are perhaps more apt to ravage the nests that are well teed up, and the other day a stoat was shot at a height of at least 25 feet. Squirrels will climb even to the rooks' nests ; but do not despise easier prey. In one case this year a grey squirrel was seen to abstract with his long claw an egg. from underneath a sitting pheasant. In spite of its contrary reputa- tion the hen pheasant may be a very excellent mother. I have known certainly two instances where a bird badly wounded by a scythe has returned at once to her clutch and successfully hatched. it off in spite both of the wound and the half-exposure of the nest. The squirrels do not, I fear, usually spare the sitting bird. In a dreg dragged down from a Hertfordshire oak. were found feathers of half a dozen varieties of birds, including yellow-hammer and pheasant.
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