COUNTRY LIFE
SIR WILLIAM BEACH THOMAS lamented in this column three weeks ago that he had never known so many nests deserted. I am by no means so accomplished an observer of birds' weddings as he ; but I should not judge that in my part of Kent their marriages had fared so badly. Every garden has its own anxieties. One of ours hangs upon the fortunes of a pair of partridges, whom we hope—if at some cost to that favourite breakfast-dish of theirs, our young lettuces—to be out for a record in the safe rearing of a family in our orchard. But green woodpeckers outside the garden, goldfinches within it and kingfishers up and down the stream are still bearing themselves with the assurance of expectant parents. Outside my door a pair of blue tits are busy about their nest in an old buttress. 1 watch their aerobatics with a delight scarcely tempered by memories of how they damaged my archives last autumn. In one October week-end all the blue tits in England developed a sudden appetite for paper. My telephone directory still bears witness to their raids ; but, in spite of this week's disturbing report that a hlue tit has built its nest in a Suffolk post-box, I am hopeful that our little delinquents, come October. will have proved themselves reformed.
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