One very hot morning in June I was the interested spectator of a mother tit showing her offspring how to bathe. The family party were unaware of my presence. There were five young hopefuls—all sons, I should imagine, for they were bigger than their active little mother. All had been born and reared in a “Brent Valley Bird Sanctuary” nesting-box, on a holly tree close by. The mother’s darker, more pronounced colouring, longer tail, and determined expression of countenance betrayed her matronhood. The children were delicious balls of pale green and gray, with tiny black markings, and their innocent and timid little faces were fascinating as they clustered round the large earthenware saucer, full of water, in which the mother was splashing.
Her energy was astounding. She flapped and ducked and soused herself till she had not a dry feather, then flew out and told them to go in. Not a bit of it! The little cowards hopped upon the saucer’s edge, stooped till their beaks touched the water, then turned right about face, and looked gravely at their claws. They flew or hopped across the saucer many times, but had not courage to plunge in. Back flew the mother, hustled them away, and launched herself once more. They watched her, and then began to imitate her movements—in the grass! The lawn just there was thickly covered with fallen blossoms from a white acacia, as also was the water in the saucer. The babies ducked and quivered their wings, and bent up and down, and quirked imaginary drops of water over their little backs. Out flew the mother, and perched on a foxglove stalk, and into the water went a siskin, and thoroughly enjoyed himself—but not for long; back came the mother tit, routed him, and called to her little ones not to be outdone by a siskin. She ducked and splashed, and twinkled and sprinkled all over again, till she was a drenched little object; but beyond crouching near her, so as to catch some of her splashings on themselves, not one of her children had nerve enough to take a bath that morning. The last that I saw of them, they were all five crouching and busily imitating her movements amongst the grass and acacia blossoms; their shrill little voices, could I have understood them, were probably calling out:
“We are trying, mother! we are indeed! Look at us! We’re doing just what you do!”
On the tenth of June, to my joy, my pretty turtle-doves appeared again. I called them my Bible doves—
“As the wings of a dove covered with silver,
And her pinions with yellow gold.”
For there is a silvery sheen about them, and a glint of gold in their plumage.
This was the third summer that they had come to the garden and nested in the wood. Such delicate lovely creatures! They came to drink, and to pick up the small corn which I scattered for them every day on the lawn.