They did so, and to their surprise a tom-tit flew out, and upon closer inspection they found its nest in one of the boots, and in the nest twelve tiny white eggs.
"These are master's marsh-boots, but when he found that the birds had begun to build in them, he gave orders that no one was to touch them until the birds had hatched off their young ones."
Tom-tit and Egg.
Tom-tits have a knack of building their nests in strange places. Inside a pillar letter-box, where letters were being tossed every day; in a hole in a door-post, which was closed when the door was shut, so that the birds were shut up during the night; in the pocket of a gardener's coat hanging on a nail. Such are the places in which master tom-tit sometimes builds his nest. Even more curious, however, was a nest I read of which was built by a fly-catcher in the spring of a bell, which vibrated twenty times a day when the bell was rung.
When they reached the wood, Dick's attention was attracted by the movements of a bird with a slaty blue back and fawn-coloured belly, which was flitting about the trunk of a large beech-tree.
"What bird is that, Jimmy?" he asked.
"It is a nuthatch. Let us watch it, and perhaps we may see its nest."