Along with my last letter, I sent some Wrens’ nests lined with feathers, and I could easily have increased them to a dozen of the same sort, only I did not wish to deprive so many of my little favourites of their eggs and young.  Every day convinces me more decidedly, that I am right both with regard to the lining of the Wrens’ nests, and as to the cock-nests also.  The nests I sent you will prove the former, and I know of at least twenty instances of the latter, in nests which I have known of all through the spring, from April to the present time, which have remained in the same unfinished state, although they are not forsaken, as I have found the birds in them, in several instances, when I have examined them.  I found one of these nests on the 10th of April, under a bank on the side of the river; and I examined it repeatedly through April and May, and always found it in the same state, although there was always a pair of Wrens about, and I could find no other nest; yet I am sure there was another, for in the beginning of this month (June) there were some young Wrens, which had evidently only just come out of the nest; and there were only two or three bushes grew thereabouts, so that it is not probable they had come from any other quarter, but the bushes were filled with dead leaves, and other rubbish brought down by the flood.  However, when I heard them, I looked out for another nest, as I believe (notwithstanding what Montagu says, that there are few birds, if any, that would produce a second lot of eggs if the first were unmolested) that most of the small birds which are early breeders build a second time the same year, even when they succeed in rearing the first brood.  I have had proof of this (if anything can be considered proof, except marking the birds), in the Throstle, the Blackbird, the Wren, the Redbreast, and the Hedge Sparrow, whose second nests may be found contiguous to the first; and in point of time, this always happens just when the first brood have left the nest.  The cock-bird, too, who had been silent whilst his young were unfledged, begins to sing again, and throwing off the anxious and care-beset manners of a parent, again assumes that of a bridegroom.  But to return to Wrens’ nests.  I found one within ten yards of the one I had known of since the 10th of April, lined, and ready for an egg.  As I was anxious to prove what I had so long believed, I pulled out this nest, thinking that the old bird was ready for laying a second lot of eggs; and that when I had destroyed this, as she had no other nest ready, she would probably take up with the cock-nest.

As it was half a mile from my house, I did not visit it again until the 16th of June, and was then delighted to find the old bird sitting on six or seven eggs in the cock-nest, which had remained so long unoccupied.  I believe that in this instance there is very little lining (fur, feathers, &c.) in the nest, although I should be sorry to examine it minutely until the young have left it; but I consider it an exception to the general rule, inasmuch as I believe the bird was ready to lay when I pulled out the other nest.  As she would have to find another with as little delay as possible, she would not have time to embellish the inside in the same manner as she probably would have done if she had had more time.