. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. s by feigning lameness or being wounded, and so taking one off the scent, as it were; but after some study of their habits one soon gets an idea of where to look for certain nests. Nature seems to have watched over all birds in one way or another. Apart from the similarity of nests to their surround-ings which I have already mentioned, theeggs are also often provided with protectivecoloration, especially when there is no nest,or simply an apology. Again, numerousother birds protect themselves and their oif-spring by nesting
. Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History. s by feigning lameness or being wounded, and so taking one off the scent, as it were; but after some study of their habits one soon gets an idea of where to look for certain nests. Nature seems to have watched over all birds in one way or another. Apart from the similarity of nests to their surround-ings which I have already mentioned, theeggs are also often provided with protectivecoloration, especially when there is no nest,or simply an apology. Again, numerousother birds protect themselves and their oif-spring by nesting in holes either in trees,stumps, walls, or even in the ground itself,sometimes using a rabbit burrow or otheranimals hole, or even excavating the groundthemselves. During incubation many bii-dsare protected by their pumage, such birdsas kingfishers, woodpeckers, and other con-spicuously-coloured birds building out of sightin covered nests or holes. The magpie notonly has its nest covered in, but enters itNEST OF PEAHJiN. irom a hole in the side which is so well 321. 322 A nima I Life protected by thorns, etc., that it is piacti-cally proof against the attacks of enemies. Nest-hunting with the camera gives onethe opportunity sometimes of disprovingpopular errors; for example, it is generallyunderstood that the common snipe lays foureggs, and always them with thesmall ends inwards; but this is not so. Ionce found a nest with four eggs in whichall the small ends pointed towards onedirection. I think, however, that this mustbe very exceptional. To come now to the photographs whichillustrate this little paper. The nest of theSparrow Hawk is placed in some elevatedspot, generally in a fir or larch, and con-tains three to five eggs—sometimes six, asin the one photographed. I think this tobe the maximum number. The groundtint is greyish-white with a tinge of blue,and a number of bold patches of very darkred-brown rather irregularly distributed, butgenerally forming a ring r
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