I stood perfectly still, with my back against a big tree. They had not got far past when they accidentally stumbled upon a blackbird's nest con mobbed and were ones, by promptly taining young " " as who just its owners, spinked spink, spink, loudly and angrily as if a cat had intruded itself upon them and their offspring.

It is a very pretty sight to see a bird building its nest. I have watched coots dive to the bottom of a pond for aquatic weeds, and, swimming up with a heavy burden, place it upon the raft-like collection already gathered have thrown feathers into the air by handfuls, and watched swallows and martins dexterously catch and carry them off to line their nests with, and the great clumsy solan goose con-structing her rude cradle of dead seaweed; but I never saw anything so interesting as a hedge-sparrow making her little home of slender twigs, moss, and hair. I watched one last spring for over an hour very early one sunny Sunday morning, She brought wee twigs and dead grass stems at a great rate, and when she had laid them in position upon the edge of her nest from the outside, hopped inside, and gave the structure shape and symmetry by hustling round and round, pressing the materials into position with her breast, and picking little twigs out here and there, and re-placing them in more suitable spots.

A hedge-sparrow has a peculiar way of entering, her nest. If under observation, of which she is

HEUGE-SPAKROW ON HER NEST.

conscious, she will hop uneasily about the bush or hedge wherein it is situated and, of a sudden, rush artificialright on to it. We tested the value of our tree -trunk as an effective hiding-place upon a allmember of this species last spring. We first of stuck the camera up in front of the nest, and covering it with a grass - green focussing - cloth; waited at a distance ready to release the shutter by means of the pneumatic tube; but in vain, she would not come near. Then we fixed up our newly-constructed tree-trunk, with the photographer and his camera inside, and, to our great satisfaction, she returned in less than two minutes. Curiously enough, whilst all was perfectly still and silent, she kept on moving her head about, but directly my brother made a low, intentional cough, she kept her little head perfectly still and listened, and he exposed his plate. I have recently seen it stated that the birds of London and its suburbs have decreased because of the cats and increased population. Whilst recog-nising the folly of hating a dumb animal merely because it carries into operation an inherited liking for one particular kind of food, I must frankly confess that I do not love cats, and it will be well to bear this avowal in mind whilst reading the following account of my experiences. This year I have known of the following species of birds having nests and eggs within five hundred yards of a Greater London farmhouse, boasting an army ot

no less than five adult cats: Pheasant, partridge, carrion-crow, missel-thrush, song-thrush, blackbird, starling, house-sparrow, hedge-sparrow, robin, wren, barn-swallow, house-martin, chaffinch, lark, whinchat, red-backed shrike, yellow-hammer, moorhen, lapwing, great tit, blue tit, kestrel, turtle-dove, white-throat. During January and February I placed old coffee-pots, jam-jars, kettles, biscuit - boxes, and other things suitable for robins to breed in, round the rick-yard and garden of this farmhouse, and early in April I was gratified to find that one of several pairs of robins living in the vicinity had taken possession of a coffee-pot which I had laid on its side in a hedgerow running parallel with a cart-shed. In this she reared two broods during the season, and we made a good many photographs of her, two of which appear overleaf. Another pair of birds took possession of the lower half of a large stone beer-bottle, lying on its side upon the ground in the garden hedgerow, and a third in the jam-jar, as represented in our photograph on page 01. This jar was situated nearest the house, and about midway between the two other nests. One morning, about six o'clock, whilst looking round I started a rabbit from a ditch close by the jam-jar, and a cat, which appeared to have been stalking it, also jumped out and bounded off home. I began to have fears for the safety of my robins., and when the one in the jar had three or four

WILD LIFE AT HOME.

it.eggs in I got iny brother to make a study of fears proved to haveA day or two alterwards my been well grounded, for I found the nest dragged more than half-way out and all the eggs but one lying broken at the bottom of the ditch. The remaining egg had a long jagged rent in it, which I judged to have been made by a cat's claw, but it is never safe to jump to conclusions. I reasoned with myself that no cat could have got at the nest without either making a spring across the ditch or from the bottom of it, and, if so, there ought to be evidence of the fact in the shape of hairs on the sticks and bushes immediately in front of the jam-jar. Examination

revealed their presence, and their number and colour convinced me that they had been torn out of the feline depredator's underparts as he crashed down amongst the twigs. Luckily, I could find not a single feather, which circumstance argued well for the robin's safety. The farmer's wife set quite as great store by her cats as I did by the birds, and as I could in no way justify drastic measures in protecting the latter, I set myself the task of discovering how I could best accomplish this most desirable end. Fortunately, I remembered once seeing an inquisitive pussy take a sniff at an uncorked bottle containing a quantity of liquid ammonia, and jump sky-high

6o WILD LIFE AT HOME.

in consequence. My brother immediately bought a supply of the very strongest purchasable, and placing a quantity of it in several small bottles without corks, we buried them right up to their necks near the remaining robins' nests, a hedge-sparrow's, and a blackbird's, which were all within fifty yards of each other, and all of which escaped I should much have liked to see the cat that came in for a sniff of that ammonia, and have known its candid opinion of the sensations caused thereby- I got one myself by accident whilst trying to imitate a cat creeping along the dry ditch bottom, and it very nearly knocked ine over on my back.

The pair of robins that had been driven from the jam-pot soon built another nest twenty-five yards further along the same ditch, and only two feet away from the blackbird's nest mentioned above. Here they succeeded in bringing off a brood of five chicks in safety. I then tore the lid off an old biscuit-box, which I found on a rubbish heap in a field hard by, and placed it on its side within a few feet of the disused nest. It was difficult to keep in position on account of its lightness and the springiness of the slender branches upon which it was resting, so I planted an old boot on the top by way of ballast. In about a month's time a pair of redbreasts discovered it and made a nest in it, and we photographed the hen sitting on her eggs, as shown in our illustration on page 63,

Immediately in front of the farmhouse is a paddock containing two old fruit-trees, one of which is hollow and has a crack in the side running down to within twenty inches of the ground.

UOHIN S NEST IN A JAM-JAU.

In the spring of 1896 a pair ot starlings bred in it, and their nest was situated so far down the hole that I was obliged to use a lighted wax vesta on the end of a cleft stick in order to make out its contents. In 1897 the hole was tenanted by house-sparrows, and the materials of their nest

filled it up so much that the eggs could be easily identified without the aid of artificial light. This year a pair of great tits took possession, and their nest was so elevated that the sitting bird could easily be seen. This circumstance yielded some interesting information in regard to her habits, but I regret to say it ultimately proved fatal to her.

When anyone looked into the hole the brooding tit puffed herself out to twice her natural size, and went off in the most extraordinary hissing explosions, the force of each of which spread her tail out against the rotten inner walls of the hollow tree like a little fan. She appeared to inflate herself with air, and then suddenly eject it and collapse. After five or six explosions she became exhausted, and each succeeding effort to terrify away the inquisitive intruder grew more feeble.

One evening, when the young had been hatched out and their parents were busily engaged in feeding them, we fixed up our artificial rubbish-heap close beside the tree with the intention of photographing them as they entered and left the hole, but the lack of a sufficiently strong light and the very rapid movements of the birds prevented us from making any studies on that occasion. We ascertained, however, that the male was much bolder than the female in approaching the nest, and that whenever the latter got tired of waiting about with her live caterpillars, she swallowed them and flew off in search of a fresh supply.

We did not visit the place during the next day, which was Sunday, but ascertained from a cowman, who took an intelligent interest in natural history, that they were all right when he called his cattle home to milk in the evening. At six

ROBIN SITTING ON HER NEST IN AN OLD BISCUIT-BOX.

o'clock next morning we were maddened to find the female and all her young ones dead in the nest. A close examination revealed the presence of a cat's short hairs upon the bark at the bottom of the slit in the tree, and the fact that the devoted rnother-tit had all the feathers scratched off her back. By the aid of a hooked stick I got her and her nest and young ones, which were all dead, out, and found the bare skin on the poor creature's

back had been lacerated in several places by the cat's claws. How she escaped being dragged out I cannot imagine, except upon the hypothesis that she was all but out of reach of the marauding brute as he stood on tiptoe against the tree. Her mate was calling pathetically for her from the trees around, and continued to do so all day long.

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