Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/278

254 House Sparrow, lately found hanging by one leg from the branch of a tree in the garden, the claws having become entangled in a confused mass of thread which it was in the act of conveying to the nest. A white Sparrow has lately been observed here, and some are met with in most seasons, but these are invariably birds of the year, the white disappearing wholly or in part after the first moult. A nest of the Great Tit was lately found in a hollow pedestal, the entrance to which was but an inch and a quarter in diameter ; and though the pedestal was removed and then replaced, the birds did not forsake the nest, and the six eggs were duly hatched. A pair of Robins built a nest and reared their young in a spare room of a house in the town, having entered by a broken window. The nest was placed on an iron bedstead resting against the wall. — (Ventnor, Isle of Wight).

— While staying with my uncle, Colonel C. L. Cocks, about three miles west of Liskeard, I observed, on May 24th and following <iavs, a Nuthatch frequently going in and out of a small hole in the perpendicular face of a bank opposite the front of the house, perhaps twenty feet from the ground, and three or four from the top, in which it evidently had a nest with young hatched. On referring to " Yarrell " (3rd edition), I find he only mentions holes in trees as the site of their nests ; and the Rev. C. A. Johns, in his " British Birds in their Haunts," says the nest is " invariably placed in the hole of a tree." Liskeard is also mentioned by Yarrell as the most westerly point where they are generally found. My uncle called my attention to the fact of their feeding on the grubs in oak-apples ; and I subsequently picked up several which had been pecked by a bird's beak, and the grubs were gone ; and though I did not actually see a Nuthatch at work upon one, I think it will be allowed that they are by far the most likely birds to have done this, — far more so than the tits. — (Great Marlow, Bucks).

[Some years ago, we remember to have seen the nest of a Nuthatch in a brick wall. The birds entered by an opening left by a displaced brick ; and this hole being too large to please them, they reduced it by plastering mud all round the edge until it was just large enough to admit the birds. A still more remarkable nest of the Nuthatch came under our observation a year or two later. This nest was formed entirely of clay, and was of considerable size and weight. It was built in a haystack, where the grass- stems and bents, passing through the clay at intervals, contributed to support it in its singular position. A notice and engraving of this nest was, at our request, published in ' The Field ' at the time. — ED.]

— In the last week in May I found a Chiffchaff's nest three feet above the ground in a young holly in the wood called St. Catherine's, close to Lucan. It was made of the materials of