'Come along, then; she'll soon fly back when we're gone; I believe she is watching us out of the elder-tree. Where did Joe say the long-tailed tits had built?'
'Right in the middle of a gorse-bush, just on the top of the mound where the goat was tethered last year. He calls them bottle-tits, but it's just the same thing, Father says. Whew! isn't the grass scratchy on your legs!'
'Horrid! My boots are full of prickles. I shall have to take them off soon. It's so deep here, it's scratching my very nose. Oh, look, Bobby! There goes one of the tits! I saw just where she flew from. Oh, here it is! See, isn't it just the prettiest little nest that ever was?'
The tit's nest would certainly have gained the prize if all the birds had been asked to take part in a building competition. It was made of the softest moss and lichens, fashioned together in the shape of a bottle with the neck downwards; for the tit must have some place in which to bestow her long tail, and she builds her home to suit her person.
Peggy thrust a cautious finger through the tiny opening in the side.
'It's full of eggs!' she exclaimed; 'I should think there must be seven or eight. I'll take two, one for you and one for me. They're the smallest you ever saw, and so warm. I hope they'll blow easily.'
Bobby had brought a box full of sheep's wool in his pocket, to hold anything they might find, so Peggy laid the eggs in with great pride, for bottle-tits were rare in that neighbourhood, and they had long wished to find such a treasure. Joe had certainly not misled them, and Bobby's memory, though defective as regarded Latin declensions and historical facts, was unerring where it was a case of locating birds'-nests.
He found three thrushes' nests low down in the elder-bushes, all filled with gaping yellow mouths, the pretty little chaffinch's up in the ivy-tree, with only two speckly eggs as yet, and Jenny Wren's household, hidden away in a bank, full of so many children that she surely resembled the old woman who lived in a shoe, and it was a marvel how she could remember which little chirping atom she had fed last. The robin had built early and her brood had flown and left the empty nest; but two blackbirds were sitting in the hawthorn-hedge, and flew away with cries of indignation and distress.
The cuckoos were still calling loudly in the distance.
'Tiresome things!' said Bobby; 'if they would only build nests like other birds, one might have a chance of finding them.'