sheet of notepaper from my stationery case, and scattered them in all
directions.

A still more accomplished mimic, a lemon-crested cockatoo, reproduced
the voices of little hungry pigs. He lived indoors on a stand over a
tray, with a chain round one leg, and was very clever at mounting and
descending by the combined use of beak and claws, without complicating
himself with his chain. He got loose one day, and ascended one of the
chestnut trees, and a volunteer went up after him by a ladder. Cocky
resented his interference, flew at him and bit his finger to the bone.
His beak was a very powerful weapon, and, until I made him a new tray
with a zinc-covered ledge, he demolished any unprotected wood or even
furniture within reach.

This spring we had a blackbird's nest in some ivy near the house, and
many times each day the cock bird came to watch over his household,
and discourse sweet music from a neighbouring tree. A pair of jays
however appeared, and seemed too much interested in the nest for the
parents' comfort, approaching so near one morning that first the cock
blackbird, and then the hen attacked them; and though they returned
again during the day, evidently bent on mischief, the courageous
parents eventually drove them from the field, and they were seen no
more. Owing to the cutting of great fir woods in the Forest for timber
supplies for the war, jays have become much more common here than
formerly, and seem to have migrated from their former haunts and taken
to the beeches and oaks in the undisturbed woods.

Birds as a rule are not well represented in books, though the drawing
is more correct than the colouring. Examine Randolph Caldecott's _Sing
a Song for Sixpence_ for a really clever sketch of the four and twenty