OUT IN THE OPEN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 148, 20 December 1945, Page 6

OUT IN THE OPEN

FOOL, DOUBLE FOOL

(By I. W. T. Munro.)

Confessing to have played rather a dirty'trick on an unsuspecting bird, neighbour of mine is now rather amused at the way he has been bested. When he found a blackbird's nest containing four eggs, in the macrocarpa hedge, he thought of his currants, strawberries, and raspberries, and was not pleased. But he guessed that, if he destroyed the nest, the birds would only build another in a less accessible spot and raise a brood despite him; so he thought to fool them by driving a pin through each egg. That, he thought, would keep down the blackbird population, while the hopeful couple would be kept out of mischief, trying to hatch an addled clutch. The joke was, however, on htm; tour fine, healthy chick,, emerged. The eggs must have been quite newly laid when he found them, and the albumen, oozing through the holes and drying, must have sealed the contents against bacteria. In the face of that, my neighbour did not have the heart to destroy the nestlings; indeed, as a man who prides himself on being pretty sharp, he gets a lot of fun out of the way the birds fooled him while he thought he was fooling the birds.