A Duel for a Box
Those of us—and we are many--who provide nesting sites for our garden birds have watched a good deal of rivalry from time to time. One of the more satisfactory of such issues has been watched by a neighbour of mine. The nesting-box in question was first claimed by two great tits, but they were ousted by a pair of nuthatches. The rarer bird and in general the less pugnacious won a popular victory. A particular gesture of the cock nuthatch is noticed and has no very obvious explanation. He—but not she—always enters the nesting hole upside down ! I have known a pair of great tits to expel from a nesting-box one of the rarer visitors to nesting-boxes, the wryneck, sometimes called the cuckoo's mate. They worked by the simple process of throwing out the wryneck's eggs as they were laid ; and very soon the bird tired of laying in vain. It is a rare achievement to secure a wryneck as lodger. The only nest that I have ever known, with the one exception mentioned above, was built in a box purposely fixed at a great height. The bird delights in the tops of trees and, unlike some others that chiefly sing in high trees, it will nest at an equal height.
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