Underneath the brown-paper manor-house, let us once more say, the ground is channelled into a sort of drain for the refuse of the nest. Here are shot the dead or weakly larvæ which a continual inspection roots out from the cells to make room for fresh occupants; here, at the time of the autumn massacre, are flung the backward grubs; here, lastly, lies a good part of the crowd killed by the first touch of winter. During the rack and ruin of November and December, this sewer becomes crammed with animal matter.
Such riches will not remain unemployed. The world’s great law which says that nothing edible shall be wasted provides for the consumption of a mere ball of hair disgorged by the Owl. How shall it be with the vast stores of a ruined Wasps’-nest! If they have not come yet, the consumers whose task it is to salve this abundant wreckage for nature’s markets, they will not tarry in coming and waiting for the manna that will soon [[289]]descend from above. That public granary, lavishly stocked by death, will become a busy factory of fresh life. Who are the guests summoned to the banquet?
If the Wasps flew away, carrying the dead or sickly grubs with them, and dropped them on the ground round about their home, those banqueters would be, first and foremost, the insect-eating birds, the Warblers, all of whom are lovers of small game. In this connection, we will allow ourselves a brief digression.
Everybody knows with what jealous intolerance the Nightingales occupy each his own cantonment. Neighbourly intercourse among them is tabooed. The males frequently exchange defiant couplets at a distance; but, should the challenged party draw near, the challenger makes him clear off. Now, not far from my house, in a scanty clump of holly-oaks which would barely give a wood-cutter the wherewithal to make a dozen faggots, I used, all through the spring, to hear such full-throated warbling of Nightingales that the songs of these virtuosi, all giving voice at once and with no attempt at order, degenerated into a deafening hubbub.
Why did those passionate devotees of solitude come and settle in such large numbers [[290]]at a spot where custom decrees that there is just room for one household only? What reasons have turned the recluse into a congregation? I asked the owner of the spinney about the matter.
“It’s like that every year,” he said. “The clump is overrun by Nightingales.”
“And the reason?”
“The reason is that there is a stand of hives close by, behind that wall.”
I looked at the man in amazement, unable to understand what connection there could be between a stand of hives and the thronging Nightingales.
“Why, yes,” he added, “there are a lot of Nightingales because there are a lot of Bees.”