Best of all (for the birds) were the small old half-ruined outhouses which had remained from the distant days when the place, originally a manor, {6} had been turned into a farm-house. They were here and there, scattered about, outside the enclosure, ivy-grown, each looking as old and weather-stained and in harmony with its surroundings as the house itself--the small tumble-down barns, the cow-sheds, the pig-house, the granary with open door and the wooden staircase falling to pieces. All was surrounded by old oak woods, and the river was close by. It was an ideal spot for small birds. I have never in England seen so many breeding close together. The commoner species were extraordinarily abundant. Chaffinch and greenfinch; blackbird, throstle and missel-thrush; swallow and martin, and common and lesser whitethroat; garden warbler and blackcap; robin, dunnock, wren, flycatcher, pied wagtail, starling, and sparrow;--one could go round and put one's hand into half a dozen nests of almost any of these species. And very many of them had become partial to the old buildings: even in closed rooms where it was nearly dark, not only wrens, robins, tits, and wagtails, but blackbirds and throstles and chaffinches were breeding, building on beams and in or on the old nests of swallows and martins. The hawfinch and bullfinch were also there, the last rearing its brood within eight yards of the front door. One of his two nearest neighbours was a gold-crested wren. When the minute bird was sitting on her eggs, in her little cradle-nest suspended to a spray of the yew, every day I would pull the branch down so that we might all enjoy the sight of the little fairy bird in her fairy nest which she refused to quit. The {7} other next-door neighbour of the bullfinch was the long-tailed tit, which built its beautiful little nest on a terminal spray of another yew, ten or twelve yards from the door; and this small creature would also let us pull the branch down and peep into her well-feathered interior. [Sidenote: Abundance of nests] It seemed that, from long immunity from persecution, all these small birds had quite lost their fear of human beings; but in late May and in June, when many young birds were out of the nest, one had to walk warily in the grass for fear of putting a foot on some little speckled creature patiently waiting to be visited and fed by its parents.