Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/358

320 a literary critic or two—would wish to do away with.

With regard to the nest-building habits of the nightingale, I have only the space to say that, as in the case of the blackbird, the female alone collects and arranges the materials, being attended upon whilst she does so—though, perhaps, not quite so closely—by the male. One should be cautious, however, in concluding that such is always the case either with this or other birds, for I have watched, for some time, one of a pair of long-tailed tits bringing feathers to the nest, whilst the other kept near about, with nothing in its bill. Yet ordinarily both sexes work together in a most exemplary way. Nothing can look prettier than these little, soft, pinky, feathery things, as they creep mousily into their soft, little purse of a nest; nothing can look prettier than they do as they sit within it, pulling, pushing, ramming, patting, and arranging; finally, nothing can look prettier than they look as they again creep out of it and fly away. Their perpetual feat of turning round in the nest without dislocating the tail, is also one of those few earthly things in the seeing of which one cannot weary.

I have often tried to watch these little birds collecting, so as to see them actually find and fly away with the materials for the nest. This, however, I found more difficult than I had expected. Every time I saw them fly out of their nest, but in spite of stealthy following, I generally lost them soon after they had entered a plantation close to where, in a fir-hedge, it was. All I could be sure of was that they flew about in different directions, sometimes into tall fir-trees,