BIRDS on account of the birds doing damage to the letters, but still eggs were laid, and had to be taken out every day until sixteen was reached, when the place was abandoned by the birds. 35. Nuthatch. Sitta casta. Wolf. The nuthatch is a fairly common bird in the county, and its grating '• gurra gurra ' may be often heard. Although the nuthatch does not excavate for itself, its well-known habit of closing with mud the entrance to the place in which the nest is placed to the size required for the ingress and egress of the bird, is a very great protection against the interference of birds larger than itself. In an old ash tree in the South Littleton churchyard was a hole of which a pair of nuthatches took possession and narrowed the entrance to keep out a pair of starlings which had inhabited it for several years. The mud used was from a road maintained with lias stone, which when dry was almost as hard as stone itself, and most effectually kept the starlings from en- tering. The entrance to the hole in which the nest of the nuthatch is placed is not always narrowed. A pair of these birds reared their young in an old wall on the premises of the writer, and the entrance was not in any way contracted. 36. Wren. Troglodytes parvulus, Koch. Locally, ' Jenny Wren.' The wren is without exception the most prying little bird we have, and its food ap- pears to consist of very small insects or eggs, which are procured by unceasing and close search in everything that comes in its way either on the ground or near to it, for the wren, unlike the tits and the goldcrests, is never seen feeding in the tops of trees. The inquisitiveness of the bird when on the banks of the Avon sometimes leads to a rather curi- ous ending. Eels are taken in the summer by means of wicker traps, large baskets locally ' putcheons,' which are taken out of the water in the autumn and laid by to dry previously to being stored away for the winter. These are found almost invariably to contain wrens which have entered the aperture for the eels, and have failed to find the way out. A very extraordinary choice of a place for its nest is sometimes made by this little bird. A pair of trousers, belonging to a man who had been engaged in the village of South Little- ton, had been hung up to dry on a line and left there some time. When they were taken off the line a small bird flew out, which proved to be a wren which had constructed a nest in them. The garments were immediately re- placed on the line and from the nest a brood of wrens was successfully reared and took flight. 37. Tree-Creeper. Certhia familiaris, Linn. Although the tree-creeper is not rare it is far from numerous, and its nest is but sel- dom seen. Three nests examined by the author were in very dissimilar places. One was in a crack in an old mud wall forming the back of a cowshed in the corner of a pas- ture field, and was composed principally of red cow-hair. The second was placed in the fork of a large pear tree, just where two large vertical arms separated a little, and then united above leaving a slit below. The third one was attached to the inside of a piece of loose bark on a pollard withy by the side of the Avon near Cleeve Prior. It was discovered by the bird flying out. Some weeks after- wards the piece of bark was torn down, when the young had evidently flown. The nest was found snugly occupying a recess inside the bark, and was formed principally of what ap- peared to be bits of stick, which proved on examination to be the dead and dried up suc- culent points of climbing ivy, which, by ex- posure, had become extremely light and fragile. It was lined with fine fibre and rabbit's fur. 38. Pied Wagtail. MotacUla luguhris, Tem- minck. The pied wagtail though a common, can hardly be called an abundant bird with us, and appears to breed less frequently than formerly. Early in the autumn, however, flights consist- ing chiefly of immature birds retire in the evening to the osier beds on our streams to roost, though certainly not in such numbers as in past years. Later in the autumn, or at the approach of winter, small companies of this wagtail, apparently on migration, appear, as they are only observed for a short time. [White Wagtail. MotacUla alba, Linn. I can only say of this species that I have seen it by the side of the Avon near Stratford, and do not doubt its occasional appearance in Worcestershire. Mr. Whitlock has discovered that it is a regular visitor to the Trent valley, though in quite limited numbers ; and its occurrence by the side of the Severn and its tributaries may be confidently predicted.] 39. Grey Wagtail. MotacUla melanope, Pallas. This, the most elegant in form and most interesting in its movement of all our wagtails, is usually an autumn visitor to our county, but has never, to my knowledge, been known to breed. In only one instance, in a wide dis- trict in the midland counties, has this bird been seen in breeding plumage, namely, in the 49
