OUR BIRDS, THEIR HAUNTS AND NESTS. Photographs by Charles Reid.
(Foulis. First and Second Series.)
These are dear little books, just right for small hands to hold. Most of the photographs are beyond praise. They have caught the ancient-wise look of nestlings as well as their delicious downiness, roundness and helplessness. Particularly engaging are the young blue-tits and cole-tits and the sternly- fluffy baby kestrels. But the corncrake looks too clumsy in body and too naked of head, and there is something exceed- ingly wrong with the two examples of swallows' nests. The first is more like a blackbird's nest than anything else, and it is not very much like that. The second might possibly be a swift's nest after it has been leased by starlinsis and house sparrows. The birds somewhat indecisively labelled " Crows —Rooks" are not convincing, being too heavily beaked, and the beaks too much curved. They are more like carrion crows. There is also something wrong with the nest in the picture of young chaffinches, though the mother chaffinch on her nest is in every way excellent. One hopes that Messrs. Foulis will soon publish a third and fourth series of these charming books, for though this review may seem to have emphasized the few errors, it has nothing but praise for the books as a whole.
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