One spring a cuckoo came to this nest in the ivy close to the casement; she was seen flying near the house several times, and, being observed to visit the ivy-covered gable, was finally traced to the wagtail's nest. For several days in succession, and several times a day, the cuckoo came, and would doubtless have left an egg had not she been shot by a person who wanted a cuckoo to stuff. It is difficult to understand upon what principle the cuckoo selected a nest thus placed. The ordinary considerations put forward as guiding birds and animals in their actions quite fail. Instinct would scarcely choose a spot so close to a house--actually on it; the desire of safety would not lead to it either, nor the idea of concealment. She might, no doubt, have found nests enough at a distance from houses, and much more likely to escape observation. Was there any kind of feeling that this particular wagtail was more likely to take care of the offspring than others? I doubt the cuckoo's alleged total indifference to her young. They certainly linger in the neighbourhood of the nests which they have selected to deposit their eggs in. On another occasion a cuckoo used a wagtail's nest in a different part of the garden here--in some ivy that had grown round the decaying stump of an old fir tree. This bird was watched, but not interfered with; she came repeatedly, and was seen on the nest, and the egg observed. Afterwards a cuckoo sang continuously day after day on an ash tree close to the garden. Lower down in the ivy, behind the logs of timber under the casement, the hedge-sparrow builds every year; and on the wood itself where the trunks formed a little recess was a robin's nest. The hedge-sparrow, unlike his noisy namesake, is one of the quietest of birds: he slips about in the hedges and bushes all round the garden so quietly and unobtrusively that unless you watch carefully you will not see him. Yet he does not seem shy, and if you sit still will come along the hawthorn within a yard. In the thatch--under the eaves of the cellar, which are not more than four feet from the ground and come up to the ivy of the gable--the wren has a nest. Some birds seem always to make their nests in one particular kind of way, and generally in the same kind of tree or bush; robins, house-sparrows, and starlings, on the other hand, adjust their nests to all sorts of places.