If the wasps flew away, carrying the dead or sickly grubs with them,
and dropped them on the ground round about their home, those banqueters
would be, first and foremost, the insect-eating birds, the warblers,
all of whom are lovers of small game. In this connection, we will allow
ourselves a brief digression. We all know with what jealous intolerance
the nightingales occupy each his own cantonment. Neighborly intercourse
among them is tabooed. The males frequently exchange defiant couplets at
a distance; but, should the challenged party draw near, the challenger
makes him clear off. Now, not far from my house, in a scanty clump of
holly oaks which would barely give the woodcutter the wherewithal for
a dozen faggots, I used, all through the spring, to hear such
full-throated warbling of nightingales that the songs of those virtuosi,
all giving voice at once and with no attempt at order, degenerated into
a deafening hubbub.

Why did those passionate devotees of solitude come and settle in such
large numbers at a spot where custom decrees that there is just room
enough for one household only? What reasons have made the recluse become
a congregation? I asked the owner of the spinney about the matter.

'It's like that every year,' he said. 'The clump is overrun by
Nightingales.'

'And the reason?'

'The reason is that there is a hive close by, behind that wall.'

I looked at the man in amazement, unable to understand what connection
there could be between a hive and the thronging nightingales.

'Why, yes,' he added, 'there are a lot of nightingales because there are
a lot of bees.

Another questioning look from my side. I did not yet understand. The
explanation came: 'The bees,' he said, 'throw out their dead grubs.
The front of the hive is strewn with them in the mornings; and the
nightingales come and collect them for themselves and their families.
They are very fond of them.'

This time I had solved the puzzle. Delicious food, abundant and fresh
each day, had brought the songsters together. Contrary to their habit,
numbers of nightingales are living on friendly terms in a cluster of
bushes, in order to be near the hive and to have a larger share in the
morning distribution of plump dainties.

In the same way, the nightingale and his gastronomical rivals would
haunt the neighborhood of the wasps' nests, if the dead grubs were cast
out on the surface of the soil; but these delicacies fall inside the
burrow a