NESTS AND EGGS 
 
 OF 
 
 FAMILIAR BIRDS. 
 
 H. G. ADAMS. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLIES," "SONG BIRDS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 WITH 
 
 SIXTEEN COLOURED PLATES. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 GKOOMBKIDGE AND SONS. 
 1890.
 
 SIMSON, PRINTER, HERTFORD.
 
 NESTS AND EGGS 
 
 FAMILIAB BIEDS, 
 
 To MY YOUNG READERS ! 
 
 You must not be frightened 
 
 by two or three hard names which I am about to place 
 before you; they are scientific terms, which are fre- 
 quently used in connection with the subject of this 
 little book, and which therefore ought to be understood 
 by all who take pleasure in the study of that particular 
 branch of Natural History, termed 
 
 OOLOGY. 
 
 That's a queer word, is it not ? It looks like a word 
 without a head, and so it is ; the Z is gone, which 
 would make it Zoology; this last word means, properly, 
 the Science of Animals, teaching their nature, proper- 
 ties, classification, etc. ; so that it is but another term 
 for Natural History. It comes from two Greek words, 
 about which I need not trouble you now. 0-ol-o-gy 
 that's the way it's pronounced signifies the science 
 of eggs ; it also comes from the Greek, as does Oolite, 
 
 1 
 
 2090959
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 of which I shall have to say something when I come to 
 write, for your instruction, a book about another ology, 
 which has a Ge before it. 
 
 INCUBATION. 
 
 Such of you as have seen the Patent Incubator, a 
 machine like an oven, by which eggs are hatched in 
 large numbers without the help of the parent birds, 
 will readily understand the meaning of this term In- 
 cu-ba-tion : it is derived from the Latin incubatio, to He 
 or sit upon. People who eat too much indigestible 
 food have frightful dreams, in which they fancy some 
 ugly monster is sitting and pressing upon their chest, 
 so as almost to prevent them breathing, and this is 
 called an Incubus, a thing that sits hard and close, as 
 a bird does upon her eggs. 
 
 NIDIFICATION 
 
 you will find explained further on, as I do not wish to 
 give you too much to remember at once. And now let 
 me say a few words about that beautiful structure, a 
 Bird's Nest, and beg of you never to take or destroy 
 one idly and wantonly, that is, without there is some 
 really useful end in view. For a mere momentary 
 gratification, you have no right to render useless the 
 labour of a little bird, and to inflict pain and sorrow 
 on a creature so calculated to please your eye with its 
 beauty, and delight your ear with its melodious song. 
 If you are really a student of Natural History, and
 
 Familiar Birds. 3 
 
 desire to form a collection of Nests and Eggs, I would 
 say nothing against your taking as many specimens of 
 both as may be necessary for your purpose; or if there 
 is some sufficiently strong and good reason why the 
 work of a feathered architect, with its interesting con- 
 tents, should be destroyed, let it be done as quickly, 
 and with as little suffering to the young or parent birds, 
 as may be. When eggs only are required for a cabinet, 
 if but one or two are taken from a nest, they will not 
 be missed by the sitting bird. Always remember that 
 the eye of the Great Creator is upon you, and that He 
 will call you to account for every act of unnecessary 
 cruelty. 
 
 Thus much have I thought it necessary to say about 
 " bird's-nesting " a practice to which boys, especially 
 idle and mischievous ones, are too much addicted. The 
 following lines by Hurdis, on a Bird's Nest, should be 
 read carefully and thoughtfully by all such, and they 
 would perhaps be induced to refrain from destroying so 
 wonderful a piece of Nature's architecture : 
 
 " But most of all it wins my admiration, 
 To view tbe structure of this little work, 
 A Bird's Nest. Mark it well, within, without ; 
 No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut, 
 No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert, 
 No glue to join : his little beak was all, 
 And yet how neatly finished. What nice hand, 
 With every implement and means of art, 
 And twenty years' experience to boot, 
 Could make me such another ? Fondly then 
 We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill 
 Instinctive genius foils."
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WHAT IS AN EGG? 
 
 j|T may at first strike our young readers that this 
 is a question very easily answered; if they 
 think so, let them try what sort of an answer 
 they can give to it, and if they break down in the 
 definition, we will endeavour to help them, as we are 
 told in the old fable Jupiter did the waggoner; but it 
 is best for young people to try, and, for that matter, old 
 people too ; let them never believe that they can't do a 
 thing "where there's a will there's away." Many 
 a boy that will take a deal of pains, and incur no in- 
 considerable risk of life and limb, to climb up a tree 
 after a bird's nest, finds it too much trouble to read and 
 learn about the habits of the creature he is thus ready 
 to deprive of its warm comfortable home and beautiful 
 eggs. He cannot tell you, if you ask him, of what the 
 nest is composed, nor how nor when it was built, much 
 less can he answer the question which we have just put 
 to our readers, 
 
 WHAT IS AN EGG ? 
 
 " Well," we hear some one say, " an Egg is a thing 
 of an oval shape, large or small, white or coloured and 
 speckled, as the case may be; it has a shell which 
 breaks if you knock it, because it is brittle ; and inside 
 is a yellow substance called the yolk, surrounded by a 
 white, clear liquid; if you boil it for a little time it 
 becomes set, so that you can take it up in a spoon, and
 
 Familiar Birds. 5 
 
 in this state it is good to eat. Oh ! very good, I like 
 an egg, especially for breakfast, with a little salt ; and 
 then eggs, and other things with them, make custards, 
 and pancakes, and puddings, and all sorts of nice things ; 
 and then I recollect some such funny ' Stanzas to an 
 Egg by a Spoon,' which begin, 
 
 ' Pledge of a feathered pair's affection, 
 
 Kidnapped in thy downy nest, 
 Soon for my breakfast sad reflection ! 
 Must thou in you pot be drest.' " 
 
 Well, never mind the rest. Now listen to our definition 
 of an Egg. The word itself, we may observe first of 
 all, is of Saxon origin ; that this is how the ancient 
 dwellers on our island used to write it ce ?, you may 
 call it aeg or oeg, which you like. Johnson says the 
 term means, " That which is laid by feathered and 
 some other animals, from which their young is pro- 
 duced;" it is also, we are told by the same authority, 
 " the spawn or sperm of other creatures," as fish, which 
 are said, you know, not to lay eggs, but to spawn. 
 Another dictionary-maker defines it to be " the ovum of 
 birds," giving us here the Latin for egg, hence that 
 peculiar shape is called oval, and the science of eggs is 
 sometimes termed 
 
 OVOLOGY. 
 
 As we have told you in a former page of this volume, 
 Oology is another term for this science, which has oc- 
 cupied the attention of many learned men, who havo 
 gone deeper into Eggs than ever you or I shall, and
 
 6 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 told us such strange things about them, as would 
 scarcely be believed by the very hens that laid them. 
 Little does the happy mother think, when she goes 
 cackling about the yard, proclaiming the event, that 
 she has produced such a wonderful object. It looks a 
 simple affair enough, one might make a thing very like 
 it with a piece of chalk ; touch it, roll it about ; boil it, 
 eat it, or crack it, and let the inside flow out; there's 
 the yellow, and there's the white ; there's nothing very 
 particular in that, all eggs are so. Well, who made 
 them so? and of what are they made? and what reason 
 is there for this peculiar arrangement of the different 
 parts of an Egg? and how is it that, under certain cir- 
 cumstances, so complete a change should take place in 
 the nature of its contents that the fluids should be 
 gradually absorbed into a solid body, and that, by and 
 by, at the end of a period which can be calculated to a 
 nicety, the shell should be burst open, and there should 
 come forth a living creature ? Truly this is wonderful; 
 but we are surrounded by wonders, and only heed them 
 not because they are so common. 
 
 Common is the vital air, 
 
 Common is the azure sky, 
 Common flowers are everywhere, 
 
 Common stars shine out on high : 
 Music of the forest bird, 
 
 Cometh without stint or measure, 
 Friendly smile and loving word, 
 
 Common are as joy and pleasure ; 
 Why from common things then turn, 
 And for the uncommon yearn ? 
 
 But about this common thing, an Egg ? It is the
 
 Familiar Birds. 7 
 
 germ or seed, so to speak, of animal life; in it is con- 
 tained all that is necessary for the formation of the 
 perfect living creature; in that little oval case lie, snugly 
 packed up, bones, and muscles, and sinews, and all the 
 delicate parts organs, as they would be called, from a 
 Greek word signifying an instrument : thus the tongue 
 is an organ of speech, the eye of sight, and so on. But 
 all these organs are in an undeveloped state, as the flower 
 is in the bud; develope is a French word, and signifies 
 to unroll or unfold. The animal is there in embryo ; 
 this again is Greek, and means a thing unperfected or 
 unfinished, so the poet Thomson says : 
 
 " While the promised fruit 
 Lies yet a little embryo unperceived, 
 Within its crimson folds." 
 
 And so, with closer reference to our subject, we might 
 say: 
 
 While the promised bird 
 Lies yet a little embryo unperceived, 
 Within its oval shell. 
 
 Dr. Harvey, who made that gi-eat discovery, the circu- 
 lation of the blood, uttered a truth when he said omne 
 animal ex ovo, every animal is born of an egg, for although 
 some animals are oviparous, and others viviparous, the 
 two words come from ovum egg, vivum life, and pario to 
 bring forth, yet may the first stage of all animal life be 
 compared to an Egg, from the smallest insect up to 
 the most huge and unwieldy creature that swims in the 
 deep sea or walks upon land. All were at one time 
 alike, mere specks, surrounded by fluid matter which
 
 8 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 afforded the material for growth and nourishment, and 
 enclosed in some kind of a case, which if not exactly 
 like an egg shell, answers the same purpose of protection 
 from injury. 
 
 What a vast difference is there between the bright- 
 winged insect, whose history we traced in our volume 
 on Butterflies, and the bird with downy plumage anil 
 the voice of melody ; between that again and the great 
 crocodile, in his scaly coat of mail; the mighty boa- 
 constrictor, king of serpents ; or that tyrant of the deep, 
 the fierce voracious shark ; and yet all these come from 
 eggs, very similar in form, and precisely so in their 
 nature and internal construction. Look too at the 
 difference in size between the egg of the humming-bird, 
 no bigger than a pea, and that of the ostrich, as large as 
 a man's head nearly, or bigger still that of the epyornis, 
 of which fossil remains have been found in Madagascar, 
 the contents of which must have been equal to six 
 ostrichs' or one hundred and forty-eight common hens' 
 eggs, that is, about seventeen English pints ; and yet in 
 all these the germ, or as it would be called, the vital 
 principle, that is, the principle of life, is but a tiny 
 speck or circle, which is attached to the membrane that 
 surrounds the yellow portion or yolk; it is from this 
 that the animal in embryo derives nourishment, and the 
 size of it, and consequently of the whole egg, is in pro- 
 portion to the quantity that is required to sustain life 
 until the protection of the shell is no longer necessary. 
 There is only so much food stored up as the bird or 
 reptile, or whatever it may be, requires before it is strong 
 enough to make an opening in its prison and come forth
 
 Familiar Birds. 9 
 
 to provide for itself or be fed by the parent. Some 
 creatures that eventually attain a large size are born or 
 hatched, as it is termed, comparatively small ; thus the 
 size of the egg is not always in proportion to that of 
 the animal which lays it; the crocodile's egg, for in- 
 stance, is but little larger than that of the common 
 fowl; the young comes forth like a small lizard, about 
 two or three inches long, takes to the water at once, and 
 begins to catch insects on its own account; its mother 
 maybe twenty or thirty feet in length. Most creatures 
 that produce eggs small in proportion to their size lay 
 a great many ; this is especially the case with fish, whose 
 spawn must be numbered by millions ; it has been calcu- 
 lated that if the young of a single pair of herrings were 
 suffered to breed undisturbed, they would in twenty 
 years together make up a bulk six times the size of the 
 earth; but so many creatures feed upon this spawn, 
 that few of the eggs of which it is composed ever come 
 to young fish, that is, comparatively few, for the vast 
 shoals which every year visit our shores, for the purpose 
 of depositing their spawn in shallow water, show that 
 immense numbers must escape the dangers to which 
 they are exposed. There are some fish of the fierce 
 and rapacious kind, such as the ray, the dog-fish, and 
 the shark, which attain a considerable size before they 
 lose the protection of the egg-shell, which is of a very 
 peculiar shape and construction, being of a leathery 
 texture, flat, and four-cornered, with a long curling 
 string-like projection from each corner ; frequenters of 
 the coast, to whom they are very familiar objects, being 
 often cast up on the beach, call them mermaid's purses,
 
 10 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 and fairy purses, while the clustered eggs of the cuttle- 
 fish they term sea grapes. 
 
 All eggs require warmth to hatch them ; the fishes 
 know this, not as we know it, because we have read, or 
 been told so, and can reason upon causes and conse- 
 quences, and so understand why, but they know it 
 instinctively. They possess, in common witli all un- 
 reasoning creatures, what we call instinct, that is, a 
 natural impulse in the right way, and at the proper 
 time, whatever may be necessary for the maintenance 
 of that state of existence in which God has placed them ; 
 so instinct directs the fishes when the time for spawn- 
 ing has arrived, to leave the deep waters, where they 
 generally remain safe from the pursuit of man, for the 
 shores, where the warmth of the sun can reach the 
 eggs, and awaken the principle of life within them. So 
 instinct teaches the bird to leave its winter home, in 
 some far southern country, and fly hundreds of miles 
 across land and ocean, to reach a spot suitable for the 
 purpose of breeding and rearing its young ; to collect 
 the materials and to build its nest, and after the eggs 
 are laid, to sit patiently on them the appointed time ; to 
 select the food proper for those little gaping bills, and 
 to tend the fledglings carefully, until they are able to 
 fly and provide for themselves, and then, when their 
 wings are strong enough for the journey, and their food 
 begins to get scarce, away they go back to the south of 
 Europe or Africa, straight as an arrow, and the young 
 ones, which have never flown that way before, seem to 
 know it as well as those which have been backwards 
 and forwards often and often.
 
 Familiar Birds. 11 
 
 But the egg, what of that? Can we describe its 
 nature and construction in a way sufficiently clear for 
 our readers to understand ? Let us try : it is like a 
 series of cases or envelopes, one within the other ; the 
 outer one only, Avhich is the last formed, being bard and 
 unelastic, that is, it will not stretch or change its shape. 
 Like the shells of some fish, and other testaceous ani- 
 mals, it is composed of carbonate of lime, which the 
 animal has the power of secreting, as it is called, from 
 its food. Hens sometimes lay soft eggs, without a 
 shell ; this shows a deficiency of the secreting power, 
 or a want of the necessary material, and may generally 
 be remedied by mixing some chalk with the food, or 
 scattering it about the yard. Next to the shell is a 
 skin called the membrana putaminis, that means the 
 membrane or skin of the shell ; it has also a Greek name, 
 ckorian ; it is divided into two layers, which separate 
 at the larger end, and leave a space called the vesicula 
 aeris, that is, air-vesicle, or little bladder ; this contains 
 the air necessary for the chick to breathe before it chips 
 the shell. Enclosed in this membrane is the albumen, 
 or white fluid, sometimes called the glair, from the 
 Latin glarea : in the same language albus means white ; 
 and our readers who live in Albion, so called from her 
 chalky cliffs, ought to see at once whence we derive 
 the word albumen ; the little cords by which this 
 bag of fluid is suspended are called chalaza. This 
 word comes from a Greek root, and has reference to the 
 connection between the suspending chords and the 
 germ, or spot, in which is the vital principle. 
 
 We now come to what may be called the provision-
 
 12 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 bag, because it encloses the yolk, which serves as food 
 for the animal in embryo ; it is called membrana vitelli, 
 or the skin of life. Thus our examination of the egg 
 has brought to view the three great necessities of all 
 existence protection, the shell and albumen ; nutrition 
 or food, the yolk; and the vital principle, to understand 
 the nature of which has puzzled the greatest philoso- 
 phers that the world ever saw. It is said in the Scrip- 
 tures that God breathed into man the breath of life, but 
 what this may be we can none of us tell ; it is given to 
 us and we live, it is taken away from us and we die ; 
 and so do all God's creatures, which by Him, and Him 
 alone, live, and move, and have their being. Man can 
 do many wonderful things, but he has not yet been, nor 
 will he ever be, able to make an egg, much less to 
 produce a chick from it. 
 
 Let us now fancy that we are looking upon one of 
 these strange little elongated globes, and that instead 
 of being opaque, that is, dark, not clear, it is trans- 
 parent, so that we can see into it, and observe the 
 changes which are taking place there. The mother- 
 bird has been sitting on it for, say twelve hours, and 
 the warmth of her body has called into action the prin- 
 ciple of growth, or of vitality ; the little spot and ring 
 in the centre of the yolk have become somewhat en- 
 larged and changed in form ; they are no longer round, 
 but the outline is irregular, showing a tendency to 
 shoot or spread out on all sides. Four hours later 
 shows them yet more enlarged, and getting into an oval 
 shape, with a distinct, though somewhat broken line 
 down the centre. When the incubation has lasted
 
 Familiar Birds. 13 
 
 thirty-six hours, (the meaning of this word was 
 fully explained at page 2) there is a still greater 
 increase in the germ, and a spreading of its mottled 
 margin over a portion of the yolk ; if at this stage of 
 growth we examine it through a magnifying-glass, we 
 shall see a little body like some curious kind of cater- 
 pillar, and veins shaped like stags' horns branching out 
 of it in every direction. On the fourth day the chick is 
 a more strange-looking object still, with great projecting 
 eyes with rings round them, like spectacles, and Avhat 
 appears to be a very blunt sort of a snout or muzzle ; the 
 whole head, and there is not much else, reminds one of 
 that of a serpent, it might be the Cobra di Capello, 
 or the Spectacle Snake, seen through a diminishing 
 glass. But we cannot give a proper description of it, so 
 we have called in the aid of our artist, who has fur- 
 nished us, on the next page, with portraits of the inte- 
 resting creature at four different stages of its growth. 
 In the last we get a side view, and begin to fancy we 
 discover some resemblance to a baby-fowl, although ;i 
 very hideous one. 
 
 All this time a great change has been going on in the 
 whole interior of the egg; the chick has, of course, 
 greatly increased, and the red veins have become more 
 numerous, and spread over the entire surface ; the yolk 
 is scarcely distinguishable from the other portions. 
 Now, too, the bones of the chick have begun to form, 
 and we clearly perceive the projection of the wings and 
 the stump of the tail, while the pupil of the eye is quite 
 clear and distinct. Larger and larger the creature 
 grows, until it fills all the space, and has to be doubled
 
 14 
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 up in a very curious manner, with the feet and the 
 head brought together, and the bill close to the shell, 
 
 36 hours. 
 
 4 days. 
 
 6 days. 
 
 10 days. 
 
 ready to be used as the instrument of liberation. Many 
 persons suppose that the parent bird chips the shell, 
 but this is not so; it is done by the little creature 
 within, which has first to make its way through a thick
 
 Familiar Birds. 
 
 15 
 
 membrane or skin ; this it does on the twenty-first day 
 of incubation. We are speaking now of the common 
 fowl; the periods in different species of birds vary con- 
 siderably, although the process of growth in all is the 
 same. One wonders how, with its soft bill, the little 
 creature can make its way through the tough skin, and 
 hard, though brittle shell ; but it must be remembered 
 that the elastic skin is stretched to its greatest extent, 
 and when in this state a slight prick will make a large 
 opening ; and the shell too is, no doubt by the pressure 
 from within, rendered less capable of resisting the 
 stroke, slight though it be, of the bill of the prisoner, 
 which does sometimes fail to make its escape, and dies 
 in confinement, if not released by some friendly hand 
 from without. 
 
 As if to assist in the work of opening a passage to 
 the light and air, there is found on the tip of the chick's 
 bill a small horny scale, having at the centre a hard 
 and sharp projecting point, which, from the position of 
 the head, is brought into direct and constant contact
 
 16 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 with the inner surface of the shell ; this scale soon 
 loosens and comes away after the chick is hatched, 
 there is then no further use for it. The preceding figure 
 represents the chick as it lies closely folded up on the 
 twenty-first day, just previous to its deliverance from 
 bondage. 
 
 We have now finished our account of this wonderful 
 process, and may say in the words of a recent writer, 
 " Dull indeed of soul must the man be, (or boy either,) 
 in whom an egg does not inspire emotions of awe and 
 admiration, wonder and worship. The circle of life is 
 from the adult (fully-grown animal) to the egg. This 
 is the vital round the beginning and the ending the 
 ending and the beginning. The wheel goes round con- 
 tinually, life kindling sparks of life ; and what is called 
 death is the worn out forms becoming cold and decaying 
 away." 
 
 HOW TO PRESERVE EGGS FOR THE 
 CABINET. 
 
 FOR this purpose eggs which are newly laid should 
 always be chosen, as any decomposition of the contents 
 will, probably, cause a discolouration of the shell. 
 Make a hole at the smaller end, with an awl, or some 
 other pointed instrument, and another at the larger 
 end, which should be as small as possible merely a 
 pin hole will do ; to this latter the mouth must be 
 applied to blow out the contents. If the yolk does not 
 come out readily, get a cup full of water, and immers- 
 ing the sharp end into it, put your mouth to the blunt
 
 Familiar Birds. 17 
 
 end, and suck up some of the water into the shell ; then 
 shake it about well, and blow it out again ; repeat this 
 operation two or three times, if necessary. If the 
 shell has got soiled in any way, wash it well in strong 
 lather, using a nail-brush if the stains do not come off 
 readily, but great care must be taken in the handling 
 of so brittle and fragile an article. Now as the mem- 
 brane which lines the shell would be likely to decom- 
 pose, and render it offensive, if not injure its beauty, 
 it is best to wash the inside with a solution of the bi- 
 chloride of mercury, commonly called corrosive subli- 
 mate, in spirits of wine; this solution should be 
 prepared by a chemist, and used with great caution, as 
 it is extremely poisonous. Pour it into a wineglass, 
 and holding the egg firmly, yet tenderly, with the finger 
 and thumb, which should not touch the liquid, put the 
 smaller end therein ; then apply the mouth, as pre- 
 viously directed, to the larger end, and suck up gently ; 
 cease doing so as soon as you are aware, by a cold sen- 
 sation in the finger and thumb, that the liquid has en- 
 tered the shell, which then take up by the two ends, so 
 as to stop the orifice, and shake it well ; then blow the 
 solution back into the glass, taking care to wash the 
 lips or the fingers if it comes in contact with either of 
 them. The Oological specimen will soon dry, and is 
 now ready for the cabinet. To render it more glossy 
 and brilliant, it may have a coat of mastic varnish, put 
 on thinly with a camel-hair brush, or, if the egg be of 
 a blue or green tint, as many are, a solution of very 
 pure white gum arabic is best, as the varnish is apt to 
 injure those delicate colours. 
 
 2
 
 18 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 As to the formation of the cabinet, and arrangement 
 of the eggs therein, directions are scarcely necessary ; 
 this must depend very much upon the means and con- 
 veniences, as well as the taste of the collector. Shallow 
 drawers with divisions sufficiently broad for the names 
 of the specimens to be written or pasted along the tops, 
 are perhaps best. Small pill-boxes, which may have 
 the names on the lids, are not bad receptacles, and the 
 cost of a few dozens of these is not much ; but above 
 all things let the arrangements be carried out with 
 neatness and order ; do not let the specimens be huddled 
 together, but classified, and placed so that the hand 
 may be laid upon any one which may be required. 
 Duplicates for exchanging with other collectors, or 
 replacing any which may be broken, may be put care- 
 fully in a drawer by themselves, their presence with the 
 others will only cause unnecessary confusion and trouble. 
 
 Care should be taken not to name a specimen posi- 
 tively ; if there is any doubt of its identity, it may be 
 named with a query ; and in the note-book, which 
 every collector should keep, should be entered all the 
 circumstances which weigh for or against the correctness 
 of the designation given to it. This note-book ought 
 to be a complete record of the time and place of acqui- 
 sition of every specimen included in the collection, and 
 of all that is curious or interesting connected with it. 
 If nests as well as eggs are preserved, of course drawers 
 with divisions are the very best receptacles ; they occupy 
 a great deal of space, and, except in some cases where 
 the structure is peculiarly neat or curious, it is perhaps 
 scarcely worth while to take and preserve them, espe-
 
 Familiar Birds. 19 
 
 cially a? doing so often iiivolves a cruel spoliation of 
 the feathered architects, whose carefully chosen situa- 
 tions for huilding are well described by Dr. Bidlake, in 
 his " Walks in a Forest," 
 
 " The cavern-loving Wren sequester'd seeks 
 The verdant shelter of the hollow stump : 
 And with congenial moss, harmless deceit, 
 Constructs a safe abode. On topmost boughs 
 The glossy Raven, and the hoarse-voiced Crow, 
 Rock'd by the storm, erect their airy nests. 
 The Ouzel, lone frequenter of the grove 
 Of fragrant pines, in solemn depths of shade 
 Finds rest, or 'mid the holly's shining leaves ; 
 A simple bush, the piping Thrush contents, 
 Though in the woodland concert he aloft 
 Trills from his spotted throat a powerful strain, 
 And scorns the humble choir. The Lark too asks 
 A lowly dwelling hid beneath the turf, 
 A hollow trodden by the sinking hoof: 
 Songster of heaven ! who to the sun such lays 
 Pours forth as earth ne'er owns. Within the hedge 
 The Sparrow lays her sky-blue eggs. The barn, 
 With eaves o'er-pendent, holds the chattering tribe. 
 Secret the Linnet seeks the tangled copse. 
 The White Owls seek some ruin'd antique wall, 
 Fearless of rapine ; or in hollow trees, 
 Which age has cavern' d, safely courts repose. 
 The thievish Pie, in twofold colours clad, 
 Roofs o'er her curious nest with firm wreath'd twigs. 
 And side-long forms her cautious door; she dreads 
 The talon'd Kite, or pouncing Hawk, savage 
 Herself, with craft suspicion ever dwells."
 
 20 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 FACTS AND ANECDOTES OF NESTS 
 AND EGGS. 
 
 EASTER EGGS. 
 
 ilURlNG the fifteen days after Easter, which con- 
 stitute the Russian carnival, the people of that 
 country supply themselves with eggs, variously 
 coloured, which they send or give to one another as 
 presents ; and when they meet during this time they 
 salute with the words, " Christ is risen ;" to which the 
 other having answered, " He is certainly risen," they 
 kiss one another. He that salutes first is obliged to 
 present the other with an egg; no one, of whatever 
 rank or sex, being allowed to refuse either the egg or 
 the kiss. This custom prevails in many Catholic coun- 
 tries ; the eggs, it appears, being considered as an 
 emblem of the resurrection. 
 
 EGGS USED AS COIN. 
 
 THE want of any copper coin in Peru has given rise 
 to a curious practice of which Lieutenant Maw was in-
 
 Familial' Birds. 21 
 
 formed at Truxillo. A person coming to the market of 
 that city, and not wishing to spend a real upon every 
 article, purchases a real's worth of eggs, with which he 
 or she proceeds to market ; buying an egg's worth of 
 vegetables from one, and so on from others, till all that 
 was wanted has been obtained. The eggs are taken as 
 current payment, and finally purchased themselves by 
 those who require them for use. 
 
 ILLUMINATED NESTS. 
 
 THE birds that build hanging nests are at Cape 
 Cormorin numerous. At night each of their little 
 habitations is lighted up, as if to see company. The 
 sagacious little bird fastens a bit of clay to the top of 
 the nest, and then picks up a firefly, and sticks it on 
 the clay to illuminate the dwelling, which consists of 
 two rooms. Sometimes there are three or four fireflies, 
 and their blaze of light in the little cell dazzles the 
 eyes of the bats, which often kill the young of these 
 birds. Dr. Buchanan. 
 
 AN EGG WITHIN AN EGG. 
 
 A FEW years since, M. Seguin submitted to the 
 Academy of Sciences at Paris, a hen's egg of extraor- 
 dinary size, in which was a second egg. Its dimen- 
 sions were eighty-eight millimetres by fifty-nine, or
 
 22 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 nearly three inches and a half by two and a quarter. 
 More recently, in 1855, there appeared in an English 
 scientific journal, an account of a similar oological 
 curiosity, produced in Scotland, in the case of a turkey's 
 
 A BOY REPROVED BY A BIRD. 
 
 A CORRESPONDENT of ' The Youths' Instructor' re- 
 lates the following anecdote, to which our young readers 
 are earnestly requested to pay especial attention : 
 " When quite young, in my boyish days, I had watched 
 some sparrows carrying materials to build their nests 
 (in the usual season), under the eaves of a cottage ad- 
 joining our own ; and although strict orders had been 
 issued that none of us should climb up to the roofs of 
 the houses, yet birds' eggs formed a temptation too 
 powerful to be easily resisted, and self-gratification was 
 considered rather than obedience. A favourable oppor- 
 tunity presenting itself, the roof of the house was 
 ascended, and not only was the nest pillaged, but seized 
 and carried away. It was soon stripped of all its un- 
 necessary appendages, that it might appear as neat as 
 possible. Amongst the externals thus removed was a 
 piece of paper, which had been a page of one of Dr. 
 Watts's hymn-books, and which, thrown away, had 
 been taken by the poor bird for the purpose of strength- 
 ening the nest, or increasing its warmth. A word or 
 two caught my eye, and I unfolded the paper. Need I
 
 Familiar Birds. 23 
 
 say that, boy as T was, I read these verses with, to say 
 the least, curious feelings. 
 
 " Why should I deprive my neighbour 
 
 Of his goods against his will ? 
 Hands were made for honest labour; 
 Not to plunder or to steal. 
 
 Guard my heart, God of heaven, 
 
 Lest I covet what's not mine ; 
 Lest I take what is not given, 
 
 Guard my hands and heart from sin."
 
 24 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 BLACK EAGLE. BROWN EAGLE. RING-TAILED EAGLE 
 FIGURE I. 
 
 UCH are the various names by which this King 
 of Birds is commonly known, all having re- 
 ference to the colour of its plumage, which 
 undergoes considerable changes in accordance with the 
 bird's age and state of health. The term " golden" is 
 probably derived from the rich tint of the feathers on 
 the head and nape of the neck. Of Eagles we have in 
 this country three kinds the one above named, the 
 Spotted Eagle, and the Osprey, or Sea Eagle : neither 
 of them are common birds, but the Golden is the most 
 so. It is found chiefly in the mountainous districts of 
 Scotland and Ireland, where it builds its nest amid the 
 inaccessible cliffs. My young readers will remember 
 that magnificent description given of this rapacious 
 bird in the book of Job : 
 
 " The rock is the place of his habitation, 
 He abides in the crag, the place of strength. 
 Thence he pounces upon his prey. 
 His eyes discern afar off. 
 Even his young ones drink down blood : 
 And, wherever is slaughter, there is he." 
 
 The Scriptures contain many other striking allusions 
 to the eagle, of whose natural history enough might be 
 told to fill a book of itself, but our attention must for
 
 Familiar Birds. 25 
 
 the present be directed to its place and method of nidi- 
 fication there's a long word ! try and remember it ! 
 Let's turn to the dictionary and see what it means. 
 Here it is Nid-i-fi-ca-tion (five syllables), the act of 
 building nests. It is derived, we see, from the Latin 
 nidificatio, and that comes from nidus, a nest : so you 
 must not call a man who builds a house a nidificator ; 
 only birds, and some insects and fishes, nidify men 
 and beasts do not; for though we have some times heard 
 of " a mare's nest," yet we cannot learn that such a 
 thing was ever seen. 
 
 But let us now take a peep into the eyrie of the 
 Eagle another curious word that; it is sometimes 
 spelled eyry, and means a place where birds of prey 
 build and hatch their young : thus Milton says 
 
 "The Eagle and the Stork 
 On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build." 
 
 This word has a Greek root, or derivative, signifying 
 egg, so that, you see, it is very appropriate. It is de- 
 sirable that the meaning of these terms should be borne 
 in mind, as I may often have occasion to use them. 
 
 We will now suppose ourselves standing upon a 
 narrow ledge of rock, hundreds of feet above the rugged 
 glen, through which rushes a foaming torrent, whose 
 hoarse voice comes upon our ears like a faint whisper ; 
 far above us rise the mountain peaks, gleaming white 
 in the sunshine ; and all around is sky, and rolling 
 mist, and awful silence. Hark to that rapid beat of 
 wings ! scarce heard at first, it grows each moment more 
 and more distinct. See yonder speck floating up from
 
 26 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 the valley ! Is it a bird ? yes, and a large bird an 
 Eagle a kingly Eagle ! measuring, it may be, nine 
 feet or more from tip- to tip of the outspread pinions. 
 It comes this way, and now from behind yonder pro- 
 jecting rock we hear shrill cries and fluttering sounds, 
 which tell that the young birds are aware of the feast 
 that their parent is bringing them. If we crouch close 
 behind this detached mass, that looks ready to fall into 
 the glen below, and peep through this fissure, we may 
 see the family at their meal ; they will all be there, for, 
 see, the mother bird, who has also been out hunting 
 for prey, approaches from an opposite direction. Awhile 
 she hovered over the plain, floating almost motionless 
 in mid-air; a hare stole timidly out of its covert, to 
 gambol among the heather on the hill side ; her keen 
 eye marked it in an instant, and " swoop" down she 
 came, straight and swift as an arrow, and poor puss is 
 borne aloft, writhing and struggling in the gripe of the 
 fierce bird. 
 
 See ! there is the nest in this hollow, formed in the 
 face of the cliff by the projecting stump of a withered 
 tree, around which some earth has accumulated, and 
 coarse herbage taken root and flourished. The hollow 
 is lined scantily with a little grass and sheep's wool, 
 which has been used by the same pair of birds on this 
 spot for many succeeding years. Sometimes the Eagle 
 dispenses with a lining to its nest altogether, and depo- 
 sits its two eggs (now and then, but very rarely, three) 
 in the mere hollow in the rock; sometimes it uses 
 small twigs or rushes, sea-weed, or heather, for the 
 purpose.
 
 Familiar Birds. 27 
 
 The eggs vary in colour, from an almost pure white 
 to alight russet brown, which, however, is not uniform, 
 but is mottled and spotted; the size is generally about 
 three inches long, by two and a third broad. 
 
 We will now leave the royal family at their feast a 
 young hare and a fat Sea Gull, the latter brought by 
 the male bird, which we saw first returning, and 
 descend, as best we may, from the perilous height 
 whereon they have fixed their dwelling, fearless alike 
 of the fowler's gun and the wintry storm, which, 
 whistling and howling, sweeps around the cliff's tall 
 head. 
 
 " The tawny Eagle seats his callow brood 
 -, High in the cliff, and feasts his young with blood ; 
 On Snowdon's rocks, or Orkney's wide domain, 
 Whose beetling cliffs o'erhang the westei-n main, 
 The royal bird his lonely kingdom forms 
 Amidst the gathering clouds and sullen storms ; 
 Through the wide waste of air he darts his sight, 
 And holds his sounding pinions poised for flight 
 With cruel eye premeditates the war, 
 And marks his destined victim from afar ; 
 Descending in a whirlwind to the ground, 
 His pinions like the rush of waters sound ; 
 The fairest of the fold he bears away, 
 And to his nest compels the struggling prey, 
 He scorns the game by meaner hunters tore, 
 And dips his talons in no vulgar gore." 
 
 MBS. BABBAULD.
 
 28 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 PEREGRINE FALCON. 
 
 BLUE HAWK. GREY HAWK. HUNTING HAWK. 
 GOSHAWK. CLIFF-HAWK. COMMON FALCON. 
 
 FIGURE 2. 
 
 [1HIS bird with many names is the largest but 
 one of the Falcon tribe, the very rare snowy 
 Jer-Falcon only being superior to it in size. 
 The term Falcon is derived from Falco, to cut with a 
 bill or hook ; and Peregrine, from Peregrinus, a travel- 
 ler, one who comes from a distant clime or country. 
 These are both Latin derivations, and express, as do 
 most of the scientific names used in natural history, 
 some peculiarity in the conformation or habits of the 
 creature to which they are applied. All the Falcons 
 are distinguished by their sharp, powerful, curved 
 beaks, adapted for tearing and cutting their prey ; they 
 are beautiful birds, graceful in their forms and motions, 
 swift of flight, keen of sight, and exceedingly bold and 
 destructive ; they are to be found in almost every part 
 of the world, ranging far and wide from their places of 
 birth ; truly peregrinators are they, or we should rather 
 say wanderers or travellers, for although this term, 
 and also peregrinations, is to be found in the English 
 dictionary, yet they are inconvenient words, and not 
 often used. 
 
 Six species of Falcon have been found in Britain ; 
 these are the Jer-Falcon, a very rare bird, the one about
 
 Familiar Birds. 29 
 
 which we are writing, the Hobby, the Orange-legged 
 Hobby, the Merlin, and the Kestrel, of which we shall 
 have more to say presently. The term Falcon does not 
 occur in our translation of the Scriptures, but the word 
 which has been rendered Hawk is supposed to refer to 
 both Hawks and Falcons, these birds being nearly 
 allied to and greatly resembling each other. In the 
 ancient sport called Falconry, and sometimes hawking, 
 both descriptions of birds were used to bring down the 
 herons and other feathered game. This cruel sport is 
 not much practised now, but a few trained birds are 
 yet kept, and occasionally we hear of " a feat of 
 Falconry" or " a Hawking match," a very different 
 affair from the gay procession of knights and stately 
 ladies, with multitudes of attendants, which in the 
 olden time passed over the drawbridge of the grim 
 castle into the green fields, amid the ringing of silver 
 bells attached to the necks of the hooded Falcons, and 
 the ti-ra-la of bugles, calling forth echoes from the 
 silent forest. 
 
 And startling the heron that stood by the lake 
 To watch the fish glide, as though scarcely awake, 
 And making the wild duck fly screaming away, 
 And the pheasant his golden plumes spread to the day. 
 
 A well-trained Falcon was in former times deemed a 
 present worthy of a king's acceptance ; thus we read 
 that the king of Scotland sent Edward the First a 
 present of a " Falcon-gentle ;" and that in the reign of 
 James I one Sir Thomas Marson gave one thousand 
 pounds for a cast, that is a couple, of Hawks.
 
 30 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 The nest of the Peregrine Falcon is usually found on 
 high cliffs overhanging the sea ; it is shallow and loosely 
 constructed of sticks, sea-weed, and such like coarse 
 materials, and is commonly lined with a little hair ; it 
 is placed on a projection of the rock, or in a crevice, and 
 is used by the same birds from year to year. A mere 
 hollow in the bare rock is sometimes chosen by the hen 
 bird, which deposits her eggs, from two to four in 
 number, early in the spring; the colour is light 
 brownish-red, elegantly marbled over with darker 
 shades, streaks, and patches ; both the markings and 
 ground colour vary considerably in different varieties, 
 and in accordance with the age of the bird ; the eggs 
 generally measure about two inches in length, by one 
 and a twelfth in breadth. The number of aquatic birds 
 on which it can prey is the Peregrine's chief attraction 
 to the sea-coast ; sometimes, however, it is found far in 
 the interior, and an instance is on record of its having 
 taken up its abode in the midst of London, on St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, the attraction in -this case being the nice 
 plump pigeons which frequented the spot, one of which 
 was struck and seized by the Falcon in Leicester 
 Square. 
 
 'High above the foaming seas, 
 
 Where the Guillemots are screaming, 
 Sits the Peregrine at ease, 
 
 Like a creature dreaming. 
 Is he wearied-with his flight, 
 
 Circling wide and soaring high, 
 Seen amid the dawning light, 
 
 Like a faint speck in the sky ?
 
 Familiar Birds . 3 1 
 
 Is he sleeping, while his young 
 
 Watch him with their eager eyes ? 
 Xo, his pinions wide are flung 
 
 On the gale, and piercing cries 
 
 From the caves beneath arise. 
 Auks and Penguins flap their wings, 
 
 Gulls fly off, a shrieking crowd ; 
 Up his capture now he brings, 
 
 Like a conqueror proud : 
 Feathers fly, all stained with gore, 
 On the rocky ledge are more 
 Bones, though plentiful before. 
 
 KESTREL. 
 
 KASTRIL. KISTRIL. WINDHOVER. STONEGALL. 
 STEINGALL. STANNEL. KEELIE. 
 
 FIGURE 3. 
 
 |HIS bird is also sometimes improperly called 
 the Sparrow Hawk, being confounded with the 
 species which we shall next have to describe, 
 and to which that name properly belongs ; it is one of 
 the commonest of British Falcons, and may be found in 
 all parts of our country, as well as in every quarter of 
 the globe. Its scientific name is Falco tinnunculus , the 
 latter term being derived, it is supposed, from the Latin 
 verb Tinnio, to chirp. Although bold and fierce natu-
 
 32 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 rally, it is not a difficult bird to tame. This species of 
 Falcon it was that formed one of the " Happy Family" 
 lately exhibited in London and elsewhere, so that many 
 of our readers may have seen a live Kestrel, although 
 sadly " cribbed, cabined, and confined," not hovering, 
 as the wild free creature loves to do, with outspread 
 wings, over the field or woodland, ready to dart down 
 upon the first unfortunate mouse, lizard, frog, leveret, 
 or small bird, which ventures into the sunshine to enjoy 
 itself. 
 
 The habit of hovering almost motionless in the air, 
 with the tail extended and the wings just slightly 
 quivering, is quite characteristic of the Kestrel, and has 
 gained for it the popular names of Stannell or Stand- 
 gall, and Windhover; its descent upon its prey is 
 described as resembling the falling of a stone from a 
 great height, being swift, direct, and noiseless, and the 
 mark aimed at, although in many instances very small, 
 is seldom missed. 
 
 The nest of this bird is sometimes placed on pre- 
 cipitous heights on the sea shore, or elsewhere, some- 
 times amid ruins, and on church towers ; even in 
 populous cities it has been known to build, and in 
 dove-cotes, where it must have been a most unwelcome 
 intruder ; holes in sandy banks, where they are suffi- 
 ciently high to be out of reach, and also in the trunks 
 of old trees, are at times the chosen places ; in the tops 
 of trees, as commonly as anywhere, and the deserted 
 nests of Magpies, Ravens, and Jackdaws, are often taken 
 possession of. When the Kestrel does take the trouble 
 to build a nest for itself, it proves but a slovenly
 
 Familiar Birds. 33 
 
 workman ; just a few twigs scrambled together, without 
 much attempt at interweaving, and a little hay or wool, 
 or a few feathers thrown inside, and the habitation is 
 ready ; no contract taken for a feathered building 
 society, could be more hastily nor carelessly executed. 
 When placed in rocks, or in banks, even this little 
 trouble is dispensed with, and the nest is a mere hollow, 
 with perhaps a few feathers inside. In fact none of 
 these rapacious birds are careful builders they never 
 make their homes very comfortable; they are the 
 warriors of the feathered creation, and they care not for 
 home pleasures : a position of strength and security is 
 all they look for, and snug, warm, cozy nests are not 
 for them. Constantly abroad, battling with the 
 elements or Avith their kind, pursuing their prey, and 
 dipping their talons in gore, all their joys are of a fierce 
 and exciting nature ; they love not quietude, and peace 
 dwells not in their habitations. They are most of them 
 solitary birds, not congregating in flocks and forming 
 little social communities, but living, each pair alone, 
 like some robber in his rocky fortress, the terror of all 
 around ; nevertheless they have their uses in the great 
 scheme of creation ; and God has given to them their 
 peculiar modes of enjoyment, with which, unless there 
 is a real necessity for it, we should not interfere. 
 
 The eggs of the Kestrel are described by Mr. Morris, 
 in his beautiful work on British Birds, as of an 
 elliptical, that is, of an oval form, four or five in number, 
 sometimes, though very rarely, as many as six; of a 
 reddish or yellowish brown colour, more or less 
 speckled, or marbled over, with darker or lighter specks
 
 34 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 or blots of the same, and some even with a dingy 
 white. The size is on the average an inch and two 
 thirds in length, hy an inch and a quarter in breadth, 
 so that they approach very nearly to a sphere or globe 
 in shape. 
 
 It was customary to keep Falcons trained for sport, 
 hooded or blindfolded, until they were loosened in 
 pursuit of the game, and it is said that if one escaped 
 with its hood on, it would keep soaring upwards, until 
 it dropped, dead from exhaustion : hence a modern poet 
 addressing ambition says 
 
 " thou who bidd'st the brightest veil 
 
 Their intellectual eye, 
 And to thy dizzy dangerous height 
 Like hooded Falcon fly."
 
 Familiar Birds. 35 
 
 SPARROW HAWK. 
 
 FIGURE 4. 
 
 [1NGULAR to say, this well-known bird seems 
 really unprovided with an alias, or second 
 name ; Sparrow Hawk he is called every- 
 where, at least in this country, though according to his 
 scientific title, Finch Hawk would be equally appro- 
 priate. Accipiter, from Accipio, to take ; and Frin- 
 gillarius, from Fringilla, a Finch, being his Latin de- 
 signation. The Ancient Britons, it appears, called him 
 Gwepia ; what that may mean we cannot exactly tell, 
 but we should hardly think that it expressed any great 
 degree of favour or affection. Next to the Kestrel, this 
 is the most common of the Hawk and Falcon families, 
 and no more daring and spirited bird is to be found. 
 The Goshawk, a rare species in England, is a large and 
 more powerful bird, but not nearly so bold as this, 
 which has been known to skim over the poultry yard, 
 and snatch up a chicken in the open day, when persons 
 were looking on, and wondering at his impudence. 
 Not always will the fear of the gamekeeper's gun keep 
 him from the preserve ; and many a young plump 
 Partridge and Pheasant has he borne away to his nest 
 in the fir tree top, on the ruined tower, or on the rocky 
 ledge, as the case may be. He chooses for his dwelling 
 pretty much the same kind of places as the Kestrel, 
 and, like that bird, frequently avails himself of the 
 labours of other feathered architects ; sometimes ejecting
 
 86 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 the rightful' owner of a nest to which he takes a fancy : 
 he too is a slovenly builder when he does condescend 
 to such mere drudgery, and takes as little trouble in the 
 selection of his materials as in the mode of putting 
 them together. 
 
 The eggs of the Sparrow Hawk are nearly round, 
 measuring about an inch and seven twelfths in length, 
 by an inch and a quarter in breadth ; their markings 
 of a deep reddish brown, upon a bluish white ground, 
 are bold and striking, and seem characteristic of the 
 bird, whose actions and motions are all decided, quick, 
 and fearless. He has even been known to attack his 
 fierce and powerful king, the Golden Eagle, and inake 
 it drop the prey which it was bearing to its expecting 
 family of princes and princesses. Think of that ! Per- 
 haps this rebellious subject wanted the Grouse, which 
 he obliged his monarch to relinquish, for his mate, who 
 was sitting upon three, four, five, six, or it might be 
 even seven eggs, in that slovenly home of his ; these 
 eggs might be of a bluish white colour, with large 
 brown blotches dashed over the larger end; or of a 
 pale dull olive, or of a dull white ground, with patches 
 and streaks of various shades ; or even of a clear white 
 with no markings at all ; but this latter is very unlikely, 
 only one laying of such having been discovered, that 
 we have heard of: and this was in a nest of five eggs 
 procured in 1851, by N. Howe, Esq., of Worcester 
 College, Oxford, as recorded by Mr. Morris, in his 
 1 Nests and Eggs of British Birds.' 
 
 High, high, in the clear blue sky, 
 There is a shadow; the Hawk is nigh j
 
 Familiar Birds. 37 
 
 Birds in the woodland cease to sing ; 
 
 Crows the cock defyingly : 
 
 From the brown hen's swelling throat, 
 
 " Cluck cluck," comes the warning note, 
 
 As she gathers her chickens beneath her wing. 
 
 Farmer Giles takes down his gun, 
 
 And the ploughboy shades his eyes from the sun, 
 
 And the dog looks on, expecting fun. 
 
 Bang ! no, missed ! and the Hawk sweeps by, 
 
 Turning round, as much as to say 
 
 I'm sorry you've thrown your powder away ! 
 
 I'll visit the farm-yard some other day. 
 
 BARN OWL. 
 
 CHURCH OWL. SCREECH OWL. WHITE OWL. HISSING 
 OWL. MADGE OWL. YELLOW OWL. HOWLET. 
 GILLIHOWTER. 
 
 FIGURE 5. 
 
 IE have here a good choice of names ; our 
 readers may take which they like, or they 
 may go back to the Ancient British, and call 
 the bird Dylluan Wen : or refer to the nomenclature of 
 modern science, and speak of the Strix Flammca, thfe, 
 first term applying to the whole family of Owls, and 
 the last derived fromflamma, flame, distinguishing this 
 particular species, the upper parts of whose plumage is 
 mostly of a yellow colour. In the lists of British Birds
 
 38 
 
 given by naturalists, there are no less than ten distinct 
 species of Owls, the smallest being the Scops, or Little 
 Horned Owl, and the largest the Great Eagle Owl ; 
 these, and several others named in the lists, are very 
 rare birds with us, indeed not above thi'ee of the species 
 may be called common ; the one which we are now 
 noticing, the Mottled Tufted, and the Brown or Tawny 
 Owl, may fairly claim this distinction, although the 
 last named will soon, it is likely, become a rare bird, 
 being devoted to death whenever found, partly on 
 account of the superstitious dread inspired by its dismal 
 hooting, and partly for its real or supposed destructive- 
 ness amongst the young of game, both furred and 
 feathered. In truth, the dismal ' hoo-hoo-hoo ' of the 
 Tawny Owl, as well as the shriller screech of the White 
 Owl, are enough to make one's hair stand on end, 
 breaking, as they do, the stillness of the night, and 
 filling churchyards and all ruinous and desolate places 
 with strange unearthly echoes : but after all it is but 
 the cry of a bird an empty sound, proceeding from 
 quite natural causes, and ought not to frighten us, any 
 more than the ghost-like figure of the creature which 
 emits it, which we sometimes catch a glimpse of as it 
 glides in that noiseless manner peculiar to Owls, amid 
 the twilight of evening, across the meadow and along 
 the hedge-row, looking out for a stray mouse, or rat, or 
 mole, or other small animal. 
 
 These Barn Owls are great destroyers of mice ; a pair 
 of them have been known, as Bishop Stanley says, to 
 take as many as forty to their nest in the course of an 
 hour. How useful then must they be to man, who
 
 Familiar Birds. 39 
 
 ought to protect, instead of destroy them, as he too 
 often does : the little mischief which they do must be 
 far more than counterbalanced by the war they wage 
 upon all kinds of destructive vermin. 
 
 If you want to find a Barn Owl's nest, you must 
 look for it where ? why in a barn of course ; perhaps 
 a hasty reader will reply; nay, not so fast: sometimes 
 it may there be found; high up, above the stout cross- 
 beam, beneath the thatched roof, with a thick curtain 
 of cobweb before it, you may see, if you are venture- 
 some enough to climb thus far, where a broadish ledge 
 is formed by the meeting of the wall and the thatch, 
 and the old cross-beam, the rude structure just a few 
 sticks laid loosely together, with a little hay or straw 
 on the top. And there sits the goggle-eyed, wise-look- 
 ing bird, upon her two or three, or it may be as many 
 as five or six, white roundish eggs, about an inch and 
 a half long, by one and a quarter broad, as contented 
 as possible. If the thrashers are at Avork below, she 
 does not heed them at all, only keeps a sharp look out 
 for the squeakers which they disturb in turning over 
 the sheaves. Every now and then, down she comes 
 upon her noiseless wings, with great swiftness, her 
 white and yellow plumage gleaming in the dusk like 
 flash of light ; and ten to one but she returns to h 
 nest with a live creature struggling in her claws, to 
 killed and eaten at leisure. If her young are hatche 
 her visits to the barn floor are very frequent indeed 
 and should there be no exit through the thatch, which 
 there frequently is, her mate and she keep flying out 
 and in at the door, as if they had a world of business
 
 40 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 at their hands, as indeed they have! Not commonly, 
 however, does the Barn Owl obtain such comfortable 
 quarters, but resorts to all sorts of out-of-the-way 
 places : hollow trees, and ivy-covered steeples and 
 ruins, the more dreary and lonesome the better, and if 
 a building of any kind is deserted and gets " a bad 
 name ;" there, as Gray says in his beautiful " Elegy on 
 a country churchyard " 
 
 " The moping Owl does to the moon complain 
 Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
 Molest her ancient solitary reign." 
 
 The ancients, you know, dedicated the Owl to 
 Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, on account, no 
 doubt, of its exceedingly grave and sensible look. It 
 is shown by commentators, that is, writers who under- 
 take to explain the meaning of the Scriptures, that the 
 word translated Owl, in our version of the Bible, often 
 refers to some other and quite different bird. Several 
 of the references are, however, correctly given, as in 
 Isaiah xxxiv, 14, where the " Screech Owl " is men- 
 tioned as a bird which haunts lonely and desolate 
 places. We will leave our readers to find out this and 
 other passages alluding to this bird ; and treat them to 
 an Owl song, written by Alfred Tennyson, the Poet 
 Laureate of England : 
 
 " When cats run home and light is come, 
 
 And clew is cold upon the ground, 
 And the far-off stream is dumb, 
 And the whirring sail goes round, 
 And the whirring sail goes round, 
 Alone, and warming his five wits, 
 The White Owl in the belfry sits.
 
 \ 
 
 J
 
 Familiar Birds. 41 
 
 When merry milkmaids click the latch, 
 And rarely smells the new- mown hay, 
 And the cock has sung beneath the hatch 
 Twice or thrice his roundelay, 
 Twice or thrice his roundelay, 
 Alone, and warming his five wits, 
 The White Owl in the belfry sits." 
 
 RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 
 
 BUTCHER BIRD. FLUSHER. CHEETER. MURDERING 
 PIE. JACK BAKER. WHISKEY JOHN. NINE-KILLER. 
 
 FIGURE 6. 
 
 ERE again we have a choice of names, and 
 curious names some of them are, not very 
 complimentary to the bird, although suffi- 
 ciently expressive of the estimation in which it is 
 generally held. We cannot imagine for a moment that 
 Jack Baker can be a respectable member of feathered 
 society, and Whiskey John is evidently a haunter of 
 public houses and such low places. The first, fourth, 
 and last of the above names are really shocking; we. 
 do not care to repeat them ; let us see if the scientific 
 title is more pleasing Lanius collurio, from lanius, a 
 butcher ah! there we are again in the slaughter-house; 
 and what the other term means nobody seems to know,
 
 42 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 and it would not do for us to pretend to be wiser than 
 the learned in such matters. The bird is called Flusher, 
 or Flasher, because when it darts through the air, the 
 rich reddish brown plumage on the back and wings has 
 the effect of flashes of dull fire ; and Cheeter, we sup- 
 pose, from its peculiarly shrill harsh note, for all which, 
 however, the bird is not a bad songster. 
 
 The Great Grey Shrike, and the Woodchat Shrike, 
 are two other species of the Lanius genus, as naturalists 
 call the Butcher Birds, which are found in this country. 
 The one which we are noticing is by far the most com- 
 mon. It is a migratory bird, that is, one which does 
 not remain all the year in a single district or country, 
 but migrates, changes or shifts its residence, migro, 
 in Latin, signifying to go, to depart. It arrives here 
 at about the end of April or beginning of May, and 
 leaves again in September or October, as many other 
 birds do, for a warmer climate, where they will find a 
 greater abundance of insects or other food. The Shrikes 
 have been called Butcher Birds from a peculiar habit 
 which they have of sticking their prey, which consists 
 of lizards, frogs, mice, small birds, and the larger kinds 
 of insects, upon thorns or other sharp projections, and 
 so devouring it at leisure : they make a sort of shambles 
 of the hedge-row, and perhaps drive a brisk trade in 
 hind-quarters of cockroaches, mice tails, frogs' heads, 
 and the like delicacies. 
 
 The nest of the Red-backed Shrike is rather a neat 
 affair, large for the size of the bird, which seldom 
 weighs more than an ounce, being six or seven inches 
 across the top ; stalks of plants, grass, wool, and moss
 
 Familiar Birds. 43 
 
 form the exterior portion, while the lining is fine fibres 
 of roots, and sometimes hair. The nest is placed in a 
 hedge or bush, and generally but little concealed from 
 view. 
 
 The eggs are five or six in number, usually of a pale 
 reddish \\hite, spotted with brown and red: they are 
 ten and a half twelfths of an inch long, by seven 
 twelfths in breadth. 
 
 With eager eye, and half-expanded wings, 
 
 The Butcher Bird sits watching for its prey, 
 
 Amid the sunshine of a summer's day, 
 And many a wary glance around he flings ; 
 In mid-air flit and flutter glittering things, 
 
 Enjoying all life's pleasures while they may, 
 
 Unconscious that the spoiler lurketh aye 
 Where pleasure sweetly to the charmed ear sings ; 
 There is a whirring sound a sudden cry ; 
 
 The Butcher Bird hath darted from his twig, 
 A form the less is in the sunny sky, 
 
 But who shall heed its loss ; that moment, big 
 With fate to one, hath passed unmarked of all ; 
 So man sinks down, and dies, in life's great carnival.
 
 44 
 
 SPOTTED FLYCATCHER. 
 
 GREY FLYCATCHER. BEE BIRD. BEAM BIRD. COBWEB 
 BIRD. POST BIRD. RAFTER. CHERRY CHOPPER. 
 CHERRY SUCKER. CHANCHIDER. 
 
 FIGURE 7. 
 
 HIS bird, which was the Y Gwybedog of the 
 Ancient British, is the Muscicapa grisola of 
 modern naturalists, the first part of the name 
 being compounded of the Latin words musca, a fly, and 
 capio, to take or catch ; we cannot tell what the mean- 
 ing of the second part may be. The above popular 
 titles would indicate that it is both a frugiverous and 
 insectivorous bird, that is, that it feeds upon both fruits 
 and insects, but of the former it takes so little as to be 
 scarcely worthy of notice, although it is often destroyed 
 under the idea that it is a great orchard depredator. 
 When found in the cherry or fruit trees, it is generally 
 in pursuit of insects which feed there, and of them it 
 destroys immense numbers. It usually perches on the 
 top of a branch, or some other projection ; and looks 
 " all of a lump," as if it were asleep ; but woe be to 
 the buzzing blue-bottle, or droning wasp, that comes 
 near ; off it darts ; the perch is empty for a moment ; 
 you hear a snap of the bill, and look up again, and 
 there sits the little brown and grey bird, just as quietly 
 as if nothing had happened. We have two species of 
 Flycatchers in this country, the Pied, which is some-
 
 Familiar Birds. 45 
 
 times called the Goldfinch, and is a rare bird, and the 
 Spotted or Grey Flycatcher. They are both migratory 
 birds, coming in May, and departing in September or 
 October. 
 
 The nest of our brisk little insect-killer is commonly 
 built in the orchard or garden, or somewhere not far 
 from the dwelling-house, and they are not at all shy or 
 timid. Singular resting-places are sometimes chosen 
 by this bird, for instance the top of a lamp-post in 
 Leeds, and even in the great city of London, near 
 Portman Square, where, as Mr. Jesse mentions, a nest 
 with five eggs was taken ; the head of a garden rake, 
 left by accident near a cottage ; a bird-cage suspended 
 with the door open in the branch of a tree ; the trellis- 
 work over the drawing-room window at Nafferton 
 vicarage, where Mr. Morris wrote his interesting account 
 of this and other British Birds, and many instances of 
 the kind might be mentioned. 
 
 The materials used for the nest, which is generally 
 built about the beginning of June, are small twigs, 
 catkins, and moss ; the lining is feathers, hair, down, 
 and cobwebs, hence one of the popular names of the 
 bird ; it is a neat little structure, and usually contains 
 four or five eggs, of a greyish or greenish white, spotted 
 with pale orange brown, and having sometimes blots of 
 greyish red at the larger end ; size, nine twelfths of an 
 inch long, by six and a half broad. There are some- 
 times two broods in the year.
 
 46 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 THE PIED AND SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS. 
 
 One is a dweller 'mid the frowning hills 
 Of Derbyshire, and rocky Westmoreland, 
 
 Where silent awe the gazer's hosom fills 
 
 To view the nodding tors and cliffs, that stand 
 In wild confusion tossed on every hand : 
 
 To gaze adown the clefts and deep ravines, 
 And listen to the roar as thunder grand 
 
 Of falling waters ; yes, he loves those scenes, 
 
 Wherein the form of man but seldom intervenes. 
 
 The other, more familiar, makes his nest 
 
 Hard by the populous town ; within the shed 
 Devoted to man's use, he takes his rest, 
 
 And there his callow brood are reared and fed ; 
 
 And when the sun-kissed cherry turneth red, 
 Parents and younglings to the orchard-ground 
 
 Are by the calls of secret instinct led, 
 For there their prey most plentiful is found, 
 In gauzy-winged flies the fruit that hover round.
 
 Familiar Birds. 47 
 
 DIPPER. 
 
 WATER OUZEL. WATER CROW. WATER PIET. DUCKS. 
 FIGURE 8. 
 
 |HE scientific name of this bird is Sturnus cinclus, 
 or as some say Cinclus Uluropceus , that is, the 
 European Dipper. It is a bird which fre- 
 quents rivers and streams, perching on stones or on the 
 banks, and descending to the bottom in search of aquatic 
 insects and small shell-fish, on which it principally 
 feeds. It possesses an extraordinary power of remain- 
 ing a long time under water, and some writers have 
 asserted that it can walk on the bed of the stream 
 without inconvenience ; but this does not appear to be 
 correct ; its breathing organs are like those of other 
 birds, and although it has rather a stout heavy body, 
 and little or no tail, yet its plumage is too light and 
 buoyant to admit of such a feat. The bird just makes 
 a rapid plunge, which carries it down, and remains only 
 long enough to secure its prey, using no doubt great 
 exertion, both with wings and legs, to keep itself be- 
 neath the water ; the latter are short, and ill adapted 
 for walking, but the claws are long and curved, and 
 well calculated to secure a steady footing upon slippery 
 stones. 
 
 The Dippers are tolerably numerous in this country, 
 and yet they are not generally known, for they haunt 
 retired spots, and are confined to few localities ; they
 
 48 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 are more plentiful in Scotland than in England. They 
 build a broad flattish nest, like a magnified powder- 
 puff, with a little hole in front or on one side, only it is 
 not made of white down, but generally of moss and 
 grass, and lined with dry leaves. It is placed near the 
 water, and usually concealed from view by an over- 
 hanging bank, a rocky projection, or the spreading 
 roots of a river-side tree ; it is a very warm comfort- 
 able abode, and large for the size of the bird ; it has 
 been found in the spokes of a disused water-wheel, and 
 also in a very pretty picturesque situation, with the 
 current of a cascade falling down before it like a glass 
 curtain. When the little Dippers are nearly fledged, 
 if you go too near the nest and frighten them, they will 
 tumble out head over heels, and go plump into the 
 water, in the most ludicrous manner imaginable. 
 
 The eggs of the Water Ouzel are five or six in 
 number, of a longish oval shape, rather pointed at one 
 end : their colour is pure white, and they are about an 
 inch long, by nine twelfths broad. 
 
 The neat little Dipper, he lives by the stream 
 
 Where the heams of the sun on the bright ripples gleam ; 
 
 And he builds him a house all of moss, soft and warm, 
 
 To shelter his young from the wind and the storm. 
 
 There he pops in and out, and he flits up and down, 
 
 And he stays 'neath the wave, till you think he would drown.
 
 Familiar Birds. 49 
 
 MISSEL, OR, MISTLE THRUSH. 
 
 SHRITE. GREY THRUSH. 
 HOLM THRUSH. SCREECH THRUSH. STORM-COCK. 
 
 FIGURE 9. 
 
 |HIS is the largest of British Song Birds, and 
 a loud, strong-voiced, noisy fellow he is; 
 taking delight to sit upon a post, or some ele- 
 vated spot, when the wind is whistling, and the light- 
 ning flashing, and the thunder rattling around, and 
 shriek away as if in defiance of the elements, whence 
 he has obtained the last two of the above popular 
 names. Naturalists call him Turdus viscivorus ; the 
 first word signifying a Thrush, and the second a plant 
 growing upon the trunks of oak, ash, and other large 
 trees, and called mistletoe ; the juices of this plant are 
 of a sticky nature, good for making bird-lime, to ex- 
 press which quality we have adopted the Latin phrase, 
 and say viscid. Here again you see how expressive 
 are those scientific terms if well looked into. Holm is 
 an old Saxon term ; it signifies the Ilex, or evergreen 
 oak, and was applied to the bird probably because it 
 was observed to frequent that kind of tree, on which 
 the mistletoe, of whose berries it is very fond, grew 
 most plentifully. Shrite must also be Saxon, no doubt 
 expressive of the loud shrill note of the bird. 
 
 The Missel Thrush is a permanent resident in this 
 country, although some flocks arrive here in October 
 
 4
 
 50 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 and leave again in May, congregating with the Common 
 Thrushes, Fieldfares, and other birds of the kind, 
 which settle on our snow-covered fields in winter, and 
 afford some excellent sport for the fowler. It is a bold 
 quarrelsome bird, and is frequently engaged in warfare 
 with other members of the feathered tribes, in which 
 it is generally victorious ; hence the Welsh people call 
 it Peun y llwyn master of the coppice. 
 
 Gilbert White, in his * Natural History of Selborne,' 
 a book full of interesting and entertaining observations 
 on animals of all kinds, alludes to the fierceness of this 
 bird, and says that in Hampshire it builds much in 
 orchards. This naturalist also relates that, although 
 the Missel Thrush is generally successful in defence of 
 his family against the attacks of larger birds, yet he 
 once observed several Magpies destroy both nest and 
 young, which they swallowed alive, although the sitting 
 hen used all her powers to repel them. 
 
 This bird is one of our earliest builders, commencing 
 usually in April ; the nest is fixed on the fork of a 
 branch generally high up in the tree ; frequently an 
 apple tree in an orchard is the chosen spot ; sometimes 
 considerable art is displayed in concealing it from view, 
 at others it is quite exposed. It is carefully and neatly 
 made, externally with lichens, moss, dry grass, and 
 stems of various plants; within which is a layer of 
 mud, and over that a lining of fine grass. 
 
 The eggs are four or five in number, of a greenish- 
 white colour, spotted with reddish brown ; sometimes 
 the ground colour is reddish white, with dark red- 
 brown spots. There are two broods in the year. In
 
 Familiar Birds. 51 
 
 the spring and summer the bird feeds chiefly on worms 
 and insects ; in autumn and winter 011 various kinds of 
 berries. 
 
 " See, the Blackbird and the Thrush 
 Are inmates of the lowly bush ; 
 And, nestling in the lofty tree, 
 The Missel-bird our inmate see. 
 Already may the curious eye 
 Aslant their patient forms descry 
 Close covering : let the passing glance 
 Suffice thee ; nor with rush advance, 
 Or motion of the extended arm 
 The mother from her chnrge alarm." 
 
 BISHOP MAXT, ' On April."
 
 52 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 SONG THRUSH. 
 
 THRUSH. MAVIS. THROSTLE. 
 FIGURE 10. 
 
 ITJRDUS MUSICUS is the scientific name of 
 this loud and sweet songster, which is one 
 of the most common of our British Birds. 
 Should my readers have forgotten what the first of these 
 Latin terms signifies, let them turn to the hird last 
 described ; the second term has reference to its musical 
 powers, which, as we all know, are very great. Old 
 English and Scottish writers often allude to the Thrush 
 under the name of Mavis and Throstle, and in Scotland 
 to this day it is more frequently called by the first of 
 these names than by any other ; thus Burns says 
 
 " The Mavis wild, wi' many a note, 
 Sings drowsy day to rest." 
 
 While William Browne, an English poet of the seven- 
 teenth century, when he went forth in the morning, 
 knew that it was very early, because 
 
 " The Throstle had not been 
 Gathering worms upon the green." 
 
 And in these two short quotations we learn several in- 
 teresting facts connected with the natural history of this 
 bird. Thus Browne tells us that it feeds upon worms, 
 and gets up early in the morning, while the grass is
 
 Familiar Birds. 53 
 
 moist with dew, to catch them. You know there is an 
 old proverb which says " the early bird catches the 
 worm," indicating that those who wish to thrive must 
 be industrious, and not lie abed too long. From Burns 
 we learn that the Mavis wild (that is, shy, loving to hide 
 in the hedges and bushes), with many a note (that is, 
 with a full rich song, having in it many changes and 
 mooVulations), sings drowsy day to rest (that is, sings 
 late into the evening, as we have all heard it, as though 
 it were chanting a lullaby to the day, and inviting all 
 nature to repose;. See now how much may be learned 
 from the poets, if they are true poets, and have studied 
 the wonderful works of God. 
 
 Of Thrushes there are several species in this country. 
 In what is called the genus Turdus, naturalists have 
 placed the Blackbird, which we shall have to speak of 
 presently ; the Missel and Song Thrushes ; the Field- 
 fare, a common bird with us in the winter; the Redwing, 
 also common at that season; the Ring Ouzel, a migratory 
 bird, pretty much confined to the mountainous districts; 
 and the Variegated Thrush, of which only a specimen 
 or two has been taken here. These Thrushes are all of 
 them insectivorous and frugiverous birds I have already 
 explained what these terms mean; seeds they sometimes 
 take, and also grain when much pressed by hunger. 
 Large flocks of the commoner kinds may be seen in 
 winter about the fields and farm-yards; hunting the 
 hedges for berries, and picking up whatever is eatable. 
 They generally contrive to keep themselves in pretty 
 fair condition, and as they are large birds, and their 
 flesh is very good, they are worth shooting ; so that large
 
 54 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 flocks are every year much thinned by the fowler's gun. 
 Nor is this wanton cruelty; God has given these and all 
 creatures for man's use, and he is quite justified in killing 
 them if it be to answer a beneficial end. 
 
 Like the Missel Thrush, the Throstle is an early 
 breeder, and it has usually two broods in the year. The 
 nest is frequently placed in the centre of an evergreen 
 shrub, bush, or thick tree, such as the holly or fir ; it is 
 formed externally of moss and root fibres ; over the in- 
 terior is spread a fine even layer of cow-dung or mud, 
 and rotten wood, forming a cement which is impervious 
 to wet ; on this the eggs are placed ; they are usually 
 four or five in number, of a pretty light greenish-blue 
 colour, largely spotted with black or very dark brown ; 
 in length about an inch, in breadth nine twelfths of an 
 inch. The Thrush has been known to build in an open 
 shed or tool-house, and other exposed situations, but 
 generally it takes good care to place its nest well out 
 of reach, and hidden from prying eyes. Pity that so 
 frequently its effects at concealment are unavailing. 
 
 " Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush 
 That overhung a mole-hill large and round, 
 
 I heard, from morn to morn, a merry Thrush 
 Sing hymns to sunrise, while I drank the sound 
 
 With joy : and often, an intruding guest, 
 I watch'd her secret toils from day to day, 
 
 How true she warp'd the moss to form her nest, 
 And model'd it within with wood and clay. 
 
 And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, 
 There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, 
 
 Ink-spotted-over shells of green and blue, 
 And there I witness'd in the summer hours 
 
 A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, 
 
 Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky." ClAEE.
 
 familiar Birds. 55 
 
 BLACKBIRD. 
 
 BLACK THRUSH. OUZEL. GARDEN OUZEL. MERLE. 
 FIGURE 11. 
 
 HE haunts and habits of the Blackbird are 
 much the same as those of the Thrush ; it is 
 a shy bird, and much more frequently heard 
 than seen. From early dawn to evening twilight does 
 its loud, clear, mellow song float over the landscape, 
 and now and then we just catch a glimpse of its glossy 
 black plumes and golden bill, as it flirts from hedge to 
 hedge, or passes from one leafy covert to another. We 
 do not often see more than a single bird at the time, 
 although most probably its mate is near at hand. This 
 habit of singing and flying solitary is supposed to have 
 gained for the bird the name Merle, by which it was 
 once commonly known in this country, and also its scien- 
 tific designation Turdus merula, from mera, Latin, 
 which sometimes signifies the same as solus alone. 
 Those writers who call the Thrush a Mavis, almost in- 
 variably call the Blackbird a Merle. You will recollect 
 that the forester, in Scott's * Lady of the Lake/ sings 
 
 " Merry it is in the good green wood, 
 When the Mavis and Merle are singing. 
 
 Shakspere gives us a variation of the term Ouzel as 
 applied to this bird, describing it as
 
 56 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 " The Woosel-cock, so black of hue, 
 With orange tawny bill." 
 
 And by Drayton, another old English poet, we are told 
 that 
 
 " On his dulcet pipe the Merle doth ever play." 
 
 The Blackbird is especially fond of cherries and other 
 fruits, therefore does the gardener wage war against 
 him, without taking into account the immense number 
 of worms, slugs, snails, and insects which he destroys ; he 
 must do at least as much good as mischief, and should, 
 therefore, for the sake of his sweet song, be allowed to 
 live and enjoy himself in his own way. 
 
 The centre of a thick bush is the place usually chosen 
 for the Merle's nest; it is formed on the outside of 
 coarse roots and strong bents of grass, plastered over 
 inside with mud, and lined with fine grass-stalks and the 
 hair, sometimes leaves. The eggs are four or five in 
 number, now and then, but very rarely, six ; the ground 
 colour is usually light blue, not unlike the eggs of the 
 Thrush, but the spots and freckles are of a pale reddish 
 brown : at times the eggs are found without these alto- 
 gether, and at others the markings are very faint in- 
 deed : there are two broods, the first being generally 
 hatched at the end of March or beginning of April. In 
 the year 1837, according to Mr. Blythe, a pair of these 
 birds built four successive nests on an island in St. 
 James's Park, London, and reared seventeen young 
 ones. 
 
 Did my readers ever hear tell of a White Blackbird ? 
 Such a curiosity has been seen more than once, twice, 
 or thrice. Albinos, as they are sometimes called, from
 
 Familiar Birds. 57 
 
 the Latin Albus, white, are not so very uncommon. 
 Hear what a beautiful song James Montgomery sings 
 to the Blackbird : 
 
 Golden Bill ! Golden Bill ! 
 
 Lo ! the peep of day ; 
 All the air is cool and still, 
 From the elm tree on the bill, 
 
 Chant away : 
 
 While the moon drops down the west, 
 Like thy mate upon her nest, 
 And the stars before the suu 
 Melt, like snow-flakes, one by one, 
 Let thy loud and welcome lay 
 Pour along 
 
 Few notes, but strong. 
 
 Jet-bright wing ! jet-bright wing ! 
 Flit across the sunset glade ; 
 Lying there in wait to sing, 
 Listen with thy head awry, 
 Keeping tune with twinkling eye, 
 While from all the woodland glade, 
 Birds of every plume and note 
 
 Strain the throat, 
 Till both hill and valley ring, 
 And the warbled minstrelsy, 
 Ebbing, flowing, like the sea, 
 Claims brief interludes for thee : 
 Then with simple swell and fall, 
 Breaking beautiful through all, 
 Let thy Pan-like pipe repeat, 
 Few notes, but sweet !
 
 58 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 RING OUZEL. 
 
 HOCK OUZEL. TOR OUZEL. MOUNTAIN OUZEL. MOUNTAIN 
 BLACKBIRD. MOOR BLACKBIRD. WHITE-BREASTED 
 BLACKBIRD. RINGED THRUSH, OR BLACKBIRD. 
 
 FIGURE 12. 
 
 |E have here a good many names with but little 
 variety of meaning; they all have reference 
 either to the bird's place of abode the wide, 
 wild moor and the rocky mountain, or to the marks on 
 its plumage, which are very distinct and unmistakeable. 
 The French call the bird Merle a plastron blanc the 
 Merle, or blackbird, with the white breastplate; the 
 term Ouzel also comes from that language, being in old 
 French, according to an authority, named Nares, Oisel, 
 which strikes us as very like Oiseau, the French for 
 bird. Turdus torquatus is the scientific name of the 
 Ring Ouzel, torquatus meaning one that wears a collar 
 or chain. A naturalist named Hewitson says this bird 
 sings sweetly, and Selby says clearly and powerfully, 
 though the notes are few. With us it is a summer 
 visitant only, and to be found but in certain parts of the 
 country. 
 
 It builds a nest much like that of the Blackbird, 
 which has been found under the shelter of a furze or 
 juniper bush, on the face of a rough bank, and among 
 fragments of rock. It lays from four to six eggs, of a 
 pale bluish green, freckled over with pale brown ; they 
 are about an inch long, and ten twelfths broad.
 
 **jgra
 
 Familiar Birds. 59 
 
 DUNNOCK. 
 
 HEDGE SPARROW. HEDGE CREEPER. HEDGE CHANTER. 
 DICK DUNNOCK. SHUTTLE-WING. 
 
 FIGURE 13. 
 
 j]HIS is a brisk, lively little bird, something like 
 the Wren, and almost as well known ; it is 
 called in scientific language Accentor mo- 
 dularis, the meaning of which we need scarcely explain, 
 the terms being so much like English words, as to 
 convey their own signification. The Alpine Accentor, 
 or Chanter, sometimes called the Collared Starling, and 
 this bird are placed in a genus by themselves, by one 
 of the British naturalists named Macgillivray. A genus 
 in natural history, you should understand, is a distinct 
 group of animals which have certain characteristics 
 alike, and are therefore placed together for convenience. 
 A genus may contain two distinct species, like this 
 Accentor genus, or a dozen. The plural of genus is 
 genera j it is a Latin phrase, and means literally a race 
 or family. The first scientific name which we see 
 attached to a bird or other classified object in nature 
 is the generic name, because it indicates the genus to 
 which it belongs ; the second is the specific name, that 
 is, belonging to the species only. Try and remember 
 this. We need not trouble you just now with orders 
 and classes, they will come by-and-bye, in another 
 book, perhaps. Now for an exercise. To what species
 
 60 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 of bird do those five light, greenish-blue eggs belong ? 
 they are without spot or freckle, rather pointed in shape, 
 nine or ten twelfths of an inch long, by seven twelfths 
 broad; the nest which contains them is rather large 
 for a small bird ; it is formed of moss, fine roots, and 
 wool, lined with hair, and placed in the lower part of 
 an almost leafless hedge, where it can be easily seen and 
 come at ? Why, the Hedge Sparrow's. Ah ! to be 
 sure, every school-boy knows that. And on every 
 string of eggs hung up in the cottage, or play-room, you 
 will find such numbers of these pretty little blue ones, 
 that the wonder is that there are any sweet Hedge War- 
 blers left to sing to us. Well, but to what genus does 
 the bird belong? You have just told us the Accentor 
 genus. True, but you must not be surprised if, when 
 you take in hand a large natural history, you find some 
 other generic name, such as Motacilla, going before 
 modularis, for different naturalists have their different 
 methods of arrangement more's the pity and sadly 
 they puzzle the student sometimes to find out the proper 
 place of a bird, in their widely-differing systems. 
 
 But we are forgetting our friend the Shuffle-wing, so 
 called from a peculiar habit which he has of shaking 
 his wings while singing his clear and pleasantly modu- 
 lated song. It is in the nest of this bird, which is 
 sometimes called the Titling, that the Cuckoo often 
 deposits his single egg, and leaves its young to be 
 brought up. The little monster soon outgrows the 
 young Sparrows, and sometimes even turns them out 
 of the nest, greatly to the astonishment and fear of the 
 mother bird, whose utmost powers are taxed to supply
 
 Familiar Birds. 61 
 
 her voracious foster-child with enough food. It has 
 even been asserted by an ancient author named Aristotle,, 
 that the young Cuckoo eventually eats its kind protector 
 up; but this cannot be true, although given countenance 
 to by Shakspere, who makes the fool in the play of 
 " King Lear " say, in allusion to the king's ungrateful 
 daughters, 
 
 " The Hedge Sparrow fed the Cuckoo so long 
 That she had her head bit off by her young."
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 REDBREAST. 
 
 ROBIN. ROBINET. RUDDOCK. 
 FIGURE 14. 
 
 N all countries where this bird is known, and 
 there are few where he is not, he is distin- 
 guished by some familiar term of endearment. 
 Thus, in Sweden they call him Tommi-Liden; in Nor- 
 way, Peter Ronsmed; in Germany, Thomas Guidito. 
 Bob and Bobby are common names for him in this 
 .country, and with old and young, rich and poor, he is 
 a prime favourite. Our great poet Wordsworth has 
 .addressed him in these lines : 
 
 " Thou art the bird whom man loves best, 
 The pious bird with the scarlet breast, 
 
 Our little English Robin ! 
 The bird that comes about our doors 
 
 When autumn winds are sobbing! 
 Thou art the Peter of Norway boors ! 
 
 Their Thomas in Finland, 
 
 And Russia far inland ! 
 The bird, which by some name or other, 
 All men who know thee call thee brother." 
 
 Except the Nightingale and Skylark, there is no bird 
 
 which the poets have so much delighted to honour as 
 
 this; and in the memory of childhood it is associated 
 
 -with all that is gentle and kind; for is it not said in
 
 Familiar Birds. 63 
 
 that beautiful and pathetic ballad, " The Children in the 
 Wood," that 
 
 " No burial these pretty babes 
 
 Of any man receives ; 
 But Robin Redbreast painfully, 
 
 that is, carefully tenderly 
 
 Did cover them with leaves." 
 
 Yes, the spruce Robinet the cheerful Ruddock is a 
 welcome visitor everywhere ; and in the dreary winter 
 time he makes himself quite at home by many a country 
 window-sill, and even fireside; and warbles his short 
 sweet song, as though he were grateful for the daily 
 dole of crumbs, and the kind words which he is sure to 
 receive. William Howitt tells us that when he was 
 in Winchester he saw, amid the deserted cloisters of 
 Wyckham's College, a Robin which the porter told him 
 was the chapel bird that regularly attended Divine Ser- 
 vice a pious bird indeed ! 
 
 But if we were to enter upon the anecdotal part of 
 Robinet's history, there is no telling when we should 
 end ; so we had better not begin. Now, what do our 
 young readers think the naturalists call this simple little 
 bird ? They will never guess, so we will tell them : 
 Motacilla, or Sylvia, or Erithacus rubecula; the first 
 three being generic names, and the last specific dis- 
 tinguishing the particular species; it comes from the 
 Latin rubra, meaning red. The French call the bird 
 Bee-Jin Rouge-gorge Sharp-beak, Red-throat ; and the 
 'Germans, Das Rothkehlchen. So that our Robin is not 
 without high-sounding titles; enough to make him
 
 64 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 proud, one would think ! And a proud bird he is too, 
 and quarrelsome withal, if the truth must be told a 
 very Turk among his kind : two male Robins seldom 
 meet without fighting, and their contests are often fierce 
 and bloody. 
 
 The nest of the Robin is generally placed under a 
 hedge, or bush, or tuft of herbage, on the ground ; 
 sometimes in a mossy bank, or grassy knoll, and it has 
 been found in a deserted mole-hill. It is related in 
 Mr. Yarrell's ' History of British Birds ' that one of 
 these nests was built in a small saw-pit, and that the 
 female continued to sit, although the sawing of timber 
 went on every day during the hatching of the eggs, and 
 rearing the young. Another pair of Robins, as stated 
 in the * Field Naturalist's Magazine,' built three suc- 
 cessive nests in a cottage which adjoined a noisy black- 
 smith's shop, and which, although not actually inhabited, 
 was used as a kind of storehouse, and constantly visited. 
 First, they chose a child's covered cart, which was 
 hanging on a peg over the fire-place ; then a shelf on 
 the opposite side of the room, close to an old mouse- 
 trap ; and then another shelf in a different corner, 
 where there was a bundle of papers. Many persons 
 visited these nests out of curiosity, but did not alarm the 
 old birds, which flew in and out to feed their young 
 through an open window-frame. 
 
 The Robin breeds early in the spring ; its nest is 
 rather bulky, being formed of moss, dead leaves, and 
 dry grass, and lined with hair, and sometimes a few 
 feathers. The eggs are from five to seven in number, 
 spotted with pale reddish brown, which sometimes has
 
 Familiar Birds. 65 
 
 a purple tinge on a white ground. They are of a 
 regular oval form, nine and a half twelfths of an inch 
 long, by seven and a half broad. The poet of Dartmoor, 
 Carrington, thus addresses the Robin 
 
 Sweet bird of autumn, silent is the song 
 
 Of earth and sky, that in the summer hour 
 
 Rang joyously, and thou alone art left 
 
 Sole minstrel of the dull and sinking year. 
 
 irtit trust me, warbler, lovelier lay than this, 
 
 Which now thou pourest to the chilly eve, 
 
 Tlie joy -inspiring summer never knew. 
 
 Th 3 very children love to hear thy tale, 
 
 And talk of thee in many a legend wild, 
 
 And bless thee for those touching notes of thine J
 
 66 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 REDSTART. 
 
 REDTAIL. FIRETAIL. 
 FIGURE 15. 
 
 |CCORDING to Macgillivray, we have in this 
 country two species of Redstarts, h'jsides the 
 one above named, which he calls die White- 
 fronted Redstart ; the others are the Blue-throated and 
 the Black-breasted, or Tithy's Redstart : the former is 
 often called the Blue-throated Warbler. These are 
 both uncommon birds with us, while the Red, or 
 Firetail, as it is sometimes termed, on account of the 
 orange tint of the tail, is by no means so. It is a lively 
 bird, and a sweet songster, possessing great imitative 
 powers. Its Latin name is Moiacitti or Sylvia phce- 
 nicurus : the first generic name signifying a Wagtail, 
 the second having reference to a wood ; and the specific 
 term being that used by the old natural historian Pliny, 
 to denote, as it is supposed, a bird of this kind. 
 
 The Common Redstart is a migratory bird, arriving 
 in this country from the middle to the end of April, and 
 leaving in October. Its nest, which is composed of 
 fibrous roots and moss, and plentifully lined with hairs, 
 is frequently placed in a hole or chink of an old wall, 
 sometimes in a hollow tree, or behind a branch nailed 
 against a wall : it has been discovered in a hole in the 
 ground. The eggs are of a uniform bluish-green 
 colour, very like those of the Hedge Sparrow ; than
 
 Familiar Birds. 67 
 
 which, however, they are somewhat smaller, being 
 nine twelfths of an inch in length, by six twelfths in 
 breadth ; they vary in number from four to seven, some- 
 times eight. 
 
 The lively Redstart strains his little throat, 
 
 Perch'd on an orchard tree throughout the day ; 
 When downy seeds upon the breezes float, 
 
 And withered leaves begin to strew the way ; 
 
 And although bright the sunny beams that play 
 Upon the landscape, yet all things denote 
 
 The glory of the year hath pass'd away : 
 And there he warbles out his farewell note. 
 Soon will his desultory song be heard 
 
 In climes more bright and balmier than oursj 
 The cold, ungenial north suits not this bird, 
 
 And so he journeys to a land where bowers 
 Are ever green, to visit us again 
 
 When the sweet smile of April lights the plain.
 
 68 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 STONECHAT. 
 
 STONESMICH, OR SMITH. STONECHATTER. STONECHINK. 
 BLACK CAP. MOOR TITLING. BLACKY-TOP. 
 
 TA CILLA, or Sylvia rubicola, is the scientific 
 name of this bird. Our readers need not to 
 he again told the meaning of the generic 
 terms, and the derivation of rubicola appears to be from 
 rubus, a bramble, and colo, to inhabit. No part of the 
 Stonechat's plumage is decidedly red, but the breast, 
 and the edging of the wings, and the tail, having a 
 rusty tinge, impart a reddish hue to the whole figure of 
 the bird, which Macgillivray calls the Black-headed 
 Bushchat ; the French name for it is Le Traquet a 
 mill clapper ; from this, and his popular English names, 
 we may safely conclude that he is a noisy fellow a 
 chatterer ! as indeed he is ; jerking himself about 
 among the whin and gorse bushes, beneath which, in 
 juniper or other low shrubs, his nest is generally 
 made. He fills the lonely places which he frequents 
 with his sharp broken notes, like the syllables snack, 
 chat, or chit. 
 
 This bird appears to be but a partial migrant, for, 
 although many leave the country in the autumn, yet 
 some are to be found here the whole winter through. 
 It builds a large nest for its size, of grass and moss, 
 lined with finer grass, fibrous roots, hair, and wool.
 
 Familiar Birds. 69 
 
 The eggs are of a light greenish-blue colour, marked 
 toward the larger end with spots of pale brown : the 
 number is five or six ; the size, eight twelfths and a half 
 long, by seven twelfths broad. 
 
 Shy bird of the common, that makest thy home 
 
 In the furze bush, all spangled with blossoms of gold, 
 
 Where seldom the wandering citizens come, 
 Or rustics approach, thy retreat to behold. 
 
 Thou singest thy song in the wilderness wild, 
 To the burrowing rabbit, and lonely Pee-wheet; 
 
 Like a hermit, no more by youth's feelings beguiled, 
 Who knoweth the pleasures of life are a cheat.
 
 70 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WHINCHAT. 
 
 FURZECHAT. WHIN BUSHCHAT. GRASSCHAT. 
 FIGURE 17. 
 
 | HIS the French call Le Grand Traquet, as if 
 he were indeed something like a chatterer! 
 That other made a noise like a mill clapper, 
 but this ! oh, this resembles a great mill clapper ! ! and 
 yet we cannot learn that he makes a greater noise than 
 his congener, as a bird of the same genus would be 
 called. On the contrary, he seems the more quiet of 
 the two his sharp cry not being so frequently heard, 
 and his song being more soft and agreeable. In their 
 general habits and modes of life these two Chats are 
 very similar, but the one which we are now noticing 
 appears to be altogether migratory, none remaining in 
 this country during the winter. It builds a nest of 
 much the same materials as the Stonechat ; places it 
 also upon the ground ; and lays in it five or six bluish- 
 green eggs, sometimes marked with reddish-brown 
 spots, but more frequently quite plain ; size, eight 
 twelfths and a half long, by six and a half broad. 
 
 The scientific name of this species is Motacitta, or 
 Sylvia rubetra ; in Latin the word rubetra signifies a 
 toad of a red colour that keeps about bushes ; and the 
 marks on the head of the Whinchat, bearing some re-
 
 Familiar Birds. 71 
 
 semblance to those on the skin of that animal, gave rise 
 to this specific name. 
 
 This bird and the Stonechat feed chiefly on beetles 
 and other insects. Bishop Mant tells us, in his descrip- 
 tion of the month of April 
 
 " How in wild moor, or sterile heath, 
 Bright with the golden furze, beneath 
 O'erhanging bush or shelving stone, 
 The little Stonechat dwells alone, 
 Or near his brother of the Whin ; 
 Among the foremost to begiu 
 His pretty love-song's tinkling sound, 
 And nest low seated on the ground j 
 Not heedless of the winding pass, 
 That leads him through the secret grass."
 
 72 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WHEATEAR. 
 
 WHITERUMP. WH1TETAIL. STONECHAT. STONECHACK. 
 FALLOWSNATCH. FALLOWCHAT. SNORTER. ENG- 
 LISH ORTOLAN. 
 
 FIGURE 18. 
 
 |NE of the popular names of this bird, we see, is 
 the same as that which properly belongs to the 
 species just described the Stonechat; and, 
 indeed, Macgillivray calls this bird, which is distin- 
 guished by the scientific title Motacilla, or Sylvia 
 oenanthe, the White-rumped Stonechat. Yarrell, and 
 most other naturalists, however, term it the Wheatear, 
 and that is the name by which it is generally known. 
 It has more white about its plumage than the other 
 Chats, which in habits and general conformation it 
 greatly resembles. 
 
 It is said to be the earliest of our summer visitants, 
 generally arriving about the middle of March, and has 
 been seen in the country as late as November 17th, at 
 which date Mr. Sweet observed a pair near a gravel-pit 
 in Hyde Park, flying about in pursuit of insects the 
 chief food of this bird. Sandy downs, chalk- and gravel- 
 pits, and stony slopes, and such places where there are 
 plenty of holes for building in, are chiefly resorted to 
 by the Wheatear, which is sometimes called the Fallow
 
 Familiar Birds. 73 
 
 Finch, because it frequents lands which lie fallow, or 
 uncultivated. 
 
 The nest of this species is often hidden deep in sandy 
 banks or chalky cavities, sometimes in rabbit-burrows ; 
 it is composed of grass, roots, and moss, with a lining 
 of hair, wool, and feathers. The eggs are from four to 
 seven in number, pale greenish-blue, ten twelfths of an 
 inch long, seven twelfths broad. Bishop Mant, whose 
 lines we have quoted on the former page, also alludes 
 to this bird, saying : 
 
 " In the wild rabbit's haunt, or field, 
 Where the brown fallow, newly tilled, 
 The reptiles 'mid the crumbling soil 
 Upturns, or flies, his favourite spoil, 
 Fain would I see the Wheatear show, 
 In the dark sward, his rump of snow, 
 Of spotless brightness."
 
 74 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 SFDGE WARBLER. 
 
 SEDGE BIRD. SEDGE WREN. SEDGE REEDLING. 
 FIGURE 19. 
 
 I&TURALISTS call this pretty little bird 
 Motacilla, or Sylvia salicaria, from salix, a 
 willow, because it is iisually found in moist 
 marshy places, where willow trees best flourish ; here, 
 too, grow the sedges and rushes, amid which it loves to 
 sport and build, and hence the popular names of the 
 bird. Another scientific name for it is Salicaria phrag- 
 mitis, from the Latin Phragmitis, a reed or cane ; so 
 the French say Bee-Jin Phragmite, when speaking of 
 the sprightly Reedling not an uncommon bird in the 
 marshy districts of this country, although but little 
 known to people generally, on account of its retired 
 habits. It is a summer visitor only, arriving in April 
 and leaving again in September. 
 
 Like most of the true Warblers it is insectivorous, 
 and the tall aquatic plants are its game preserves ; there 
 it finds in abundance sprawling water-beetles and 
 spiders, and dancing gnats, and dragon-flies, gleaming 
 in the sun like winged emeralds, and feeds away right 
 merrily ; there it places on the ground its large, loosely- 
 constructed nest of moss and coarse grass, lined with 
 finer grass, and perhaps a little hair intermixed, within 
 which are placed five or six eggs, of a greenish, or
 
 Familiar Birds. 75 
 
 yellowish white, spotted or freckled with light brown. 
 The young are hatched towards the end of May, or be- 
 ginning of June. Brown and dingy white are the pre- 
 vailing colours of the plumage of this bird, which is a 
 sweet songster, singing all day long, and easily urged 
 into song, if, when it chances to be silent, a stone is 
 thrown at it ! Its singing is very singular, as it sounds 
 forth from the reedy waters late at night, when hun- 
 dreds of voices seem sometimes joining in concert -, and 
 the traveller, at that lone hour, listens with wonder and 
 pleasure to the strange tones.
 
 76 2fests and Eggs of 
 
 REED WARBLER. 
 
 REED WREN. MARSH REEDLING. 
 FIGURE 20. 
 
 \OTACILLA, or Syhia arundinacea, is the title 
 assigned to this bird in the lists of most natu- 
 ralists, and the reason of the generic term will 
 be at once perceived when we state that arundo in Latin 
 means a reed or cane. The places of resort, habits, and 
 general appearance of this bird are so similar to those 
 of the Sedge Warbler, that the two are generally 
 confounded. The nest, however, affords an obvious 
 mark of distinction, being, in this species, generally 
 somewhat elevated above the ground, and supported by 
 the stalks of the reeds or rushes around which it is 
 woven. It is rather a deep structure, somewhat in the 
 form of an inverted cone, or, to be plainer, a sugar-loaf 
 turned upside down, only not so long in proportion to 
 its breadth as that. It is sometimes built so close to 
 the river, that at every flow of the tide the water covers 
 the ground beneath it, and there it hangs, swayed to 
 and fro by the gale which whistles amidst the sedges 
 around, and waves about their long streamer-like leaves 
 as pretty a sight as the eye need wish to see, espe- 
 cially if there should be four or five little cheepers 
 peeping over the edges, and saying, as well as they are 
 able, " give, give !" while the old birds flit in and out 
 of the reedy forest, bringing food, and at times stopping
 
 Familiar Birds. 77 
 
 to pour out the low sweet warble peculiarly their own, 
 or to imitate the notes of some other bird that chances 
 to be singing near at hand. Often is this warble heard 
 in calm, clear summer nights, hence the term Night 
 Warbler has been applied to the bird. When it ceases 
 to sing, should any one be desirous to hear it again, a 
 stone thrown into the lurking-place of the songster will 
 generally attain the desired object. Bee-Jin des Roseaux 
 is the French name for this bird, des Roseaux meaning 
 of the reeds. 
 
 Its nest is composed of the same materials as that of 
 the Sedge Warbler, and the eggs are about the same in 
 number and size ; that is, eight twelfths of an inch long 
 by six twelfths in breadth, of a greenish- white colour, 
 spotted with ash-green and light brown. The follow- 
 ing descriptive lines will suit equally well for either 
 bird : 
 
 Where rushes hide the stagnant pool, or fringe the gliding stream, 
 
 And in the sunshine dragon-flies, like winged jewels gleam; 
 
 Where on the borders of the marsh, the stunted hawthorns grow, 
 
 And thrift, and wild sea-lavender shed o'er a purple glow; 
 
 Where alders tremulously stand, and osier twigs are seen 
 
 To dance unto the singing breeze, like fairies clad in green ; 
 
 Where drooping willows kiss the wave, and whistling reeds in ranks, 
 
 Incline their velvet heads unto the shores, and shelving banks ; 
 
 Where dives the sullen water rat ; where leaps the speckled frog ; 
 
 And flies and widges gaily sport above the quaking bog; 
 
 'Tis there the blithe Sedge Warbler dwells, and there his nest he builds, 
 
 In rushy tuft, or whatsoe'er the needful shelter yields ; 
 
 'Tis there he singeth constantly, a sweet, though scarce-heard song, 
 
 When skies are beautifully blue, and summer days are long, 
 
 And sometimes in the misty morn, and sometimes in the night, 
 
 He chanteth out right merrily, to show his heart is light :
 
 78 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 He glanceth 'twixt the bending reeds, he skiinmeth o'er the tide, 
 \nd many a snug retreat is there, his form from foes to hide ; 
 orne weal, come woe, his constant mate still sitteth on her nest, 
 And food is plentiful, that he may pick and choose the best; 
 And for his rising family he hath no anxious cares, 
 Like men, that know the world is full of pitfalls and of snares, 
 With fears, that truly prophesy, his heart is never stirred; 
 He is unconscious of all these oh, happy, happy bird ! 
 
 NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 FIGURE 21. 
 
 IE are almost afraid to begin about the Nightin- 
 gale, lest we should never leave off again, the 
 subject being one which a real lover of birds 
 can scarcely treat of in plain prose, or in a limited space. 
 Singular to say, this chief of feathered songsters has 
 but one common name, at least in this country, where 
 it is universally called the Nightingale the name being 
 composed of two Saxon words, signifying night and to 
 sing. My readers are not, however, to imagine that 
 because they hear this bird spoken of as the bird of 
 night, the songster of the night, and so on, that it only 
 sings during the silent hours usually devoted to sleep ; 
 its melodious song may be constantly heard in the day- 
 time, from April, when it arrives in this country, to the 
 beginning of June, when it usually becomes silent, or
 
 - 
 
 *.,.-,,
 
 Familiar Birds. 79 
 
 utters only an occasional hoarse kind of croak, which is 
 supposed to be a warning of approaching danger to its 
 mate or young. The Nightingale is frequently alluded 
 to by the poets under the name of Philomel, and this 
 may be called the classical name of the bird, because it 
 is taken from Ovid, a Latin poet, who tells a story 
 about a human being, who was metamorphosed, or 
 changed, into this sweet songster, which is more poeti- 
 cal than probable. However, some naturalists have 
 adopted the name, and say Philomela luscinia, and the 
 only explanation of the latter term we can give is, that 
 luscinia, in Latin, means a Nightingale. Motacilla, 
 Sylvia, and Curruca are also generic names applied by 
 naturalists to this bird, which is called, in French, 
 Bee-Jin Rossignol, the latter term having no other 
 meaning, that we are aware of, than Nightingale. 
 
 Such of my readers as have not yet heard the music 
 of this delightful songster, have indeed a treat in store. 
 We wonder not that old Isaak Walton should have ex- 
 claimed, when listening to its rich burst of harmony, 
 " Lord ! what music hast Thou provided for the saints 
 in heaven, when Thou givest bad men such music on 
 earth?" 
 
 The chief haunts of the Nightingale are copses, shrub- 
 beries, arid thick hedge-rows, where it can be well 
 screened from view. It delights to be in the neighbour- 
 hood of running streams, as it there finds the greatest 
 abundance of insect food : it returns year after year to 
 the same spot, and delights the same ears with its 
 melodious song. Shame that so frequently the trap 
 and snare should deprive a whole neighbourhood of this
 
 80 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 gratification ; but so it is the bird is easily caught, 
 and there are those who make a business of capturing 
 the sweet songster and consigning it to a prison for 
 life. 
 
 The nest of the Nightingale, as Mr. Morris tells us, 
 " is almost always placed on the ground, in some natural 
 hollow, amongst the roots of a tree, on a bank, or at the 
 foot of a hedge-row, though sometimes two or three feet 
 from the surface ; it is very loosely put together, and is 
 formed of various materials, such as dried stalks of 
 grasses, and leaves, small fibrous roots, and bits of bark, 
 lined with a few hairs and the finer portions of the grass. 
 It is about five inches and a half in external diameter, 
 by about three internally ; and is about three and a half 
 inches deep." 
 
 The eggs, which are laid in May, are rather large for 
 the size of the bird, being nine and a half twelfths of 
 an inch long, by seven twelfths broad. They are four, 
 five, or six in number, of a regular oval form, and usually 
 of an uniform glossy dull olive-brown colour; sometimes 
 they are tinged with greyish blue, and some have more 
 or less of green prevailing in the ground colour, or 
 mottling the surface. The young birds are hatched in 
 June, and are frequently seen hopping about the ground 
 in the neighbourhood of the nest long before they are 
 able to fly. The poet Clare has so faithfully and beauti- 
 fully described the haunt and nest of the Nightingale, 
 that we are tempted to make a long extract. 
 
 " Up this green woodland ride let's softly rove 
 And list the Nightingale she dwells just here,
 
 Familiar Birds. 81 
 
 Hush ! let the wood gate softly clap for fear 
 The noise might drive her from her home of love. 
 ******** 
 
 We will not plunder music of its dower, 
 
 Nor turn this spot of happiness to thrall, 
 
 For melody seems hid in every flower 
 
 That blossoms near thy home. These harebells all 
 
 Seem bowing with the beautiful in song : 
 
 And gaping cuckoo-flower, with spotted leaves, 
 
 Seems blushing of the singing it has heard. 
 
 How curious is the nest ; no other bird 
 
 Uses such loose materials : dead oaken leaves 
 
 Are placed without, and velvet moss within, 
 
 And little scraps of grass, and scant and spare, 
 
 What scarcely seem materials, down ani hair ; 
 
 For from men's haunts she nothing seems to win. 
 
 Yet nature is the builder, and contrives 
 
 Homes for her children's comfort, even here, 
 
 Where solitude's disciples spend their lives 
 
 Unseen, save when a wanderer passes near 
 
 That loves such pleasant places. Deep adown 
 
 The nest is made, a hermit's mossy cell : 
 
 Snug lie her curious eggs, in number five, 
 
 Of deadened green, or rather olive brown ; 
 
 And the old prickly thorn bush guards them well. 
 
 So here we'll leave them, still unknown to wrong, 
 
 As the old woodlands' legacy of song." 
 
 6
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 BLACKCAP. 
 
 BLACKCAP WARBLER. MOCK NIGHTINGALE. 
 FIGURE 22. 
 
 JCIENTIFIC name, Motacitta or Sylvia atrica- 
 pitta, from ater, black ; and capillus, the hair 
 of the head. We know an old gentleman, 
 who wears a short, crisp, round, black wig, whom we 
 never look at without being reminded of the Blackcap ; 
 he has such a sharp knowing look, just like the bird 
 has ; we never heard him sing, so we cannot tell Avhat 
 his musical powers may be, but if they are anything 
 like those of the Mock Nightingale, it would be worth 
 going some distance to listen to him ; for this bird is, 
 next to the real Nightingale, the sweetest songster of 
 the woodland choir, or, if not of the whole choir, the 
 sweetest of the warbler family. 
 
 The question may here arise in the minds of our 
 readers are not all song birds warblers ? If we take 
 the common meaning of the term warble, which is to 
 sing to utter musically, undoubtedly they are; but 
 when we speak of warblers in natural history, we mean 
 a certain order or family of song birds, which have cer- 
 tain common characteristics, and are therefore grouped 
 together under the generic term Sylmadce. A very 
 interesting account of this Sylvia genus has been written 
 by Mr. Sweet, who paid great attention to their habits
 
 Familiar Birds. 83 
 
 and capabilities, especially in a state of confinement. 
 These are all what are called soft-billed or insect-eating 
 birds the most difficult of any to rear and preserve in 
 health ; they are all more or less gifted with musical 
 powers, and therefore worth having considerable pains 
 bestowed upon them. Let it be understood then that 
 when we speak of warblers, we mean birds of this 
 genus, Sylvia. 
 
 The Blackcap, which the French naturalist, BuiFon, 
 calls Fauvette a tete noir the favourite with the black 
 head generally arrives in this country about the middle 
 of April, and leaves again in September : some few, it 
 appears, remain through the winter. It is a bird of shy 
 and retired habits, haunting much the same spots as the 
 Nightingale, although it is not so local in its distribution 
 as that bird, that is, it is more widely and generally dis- 
 tributed. 
 
 The nest, which is built about the end of May or 
 beginning of June, is made of dry grass and small 
 fibrous roots, with sometimes a little hair and moss; 
 spiders' web and wool are also occasionally used by the 
 bird to make up his structure, which is a tolerably neat 
 one; it is usually lined with hair, and placed in a 
 bramble or other bush, about two or three feet from 
 the ground; often in a currant or raspberry bush, of 
 the fruit of which the bird is very fond. The eggs are 
 usually four or five in number, of a pale greenish white, 
 mottled with light brown and grey, with a few spots 
 and streaks of dark brown. They have been found of 
 a beautiful flesh or salmon-colour : the size varies con- 
 siderably.
 
 84 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 The Blackcap she builds in the raspberry bush, 
 
 And a snug little nest she makes ; 
 And sweetly her mate singeth near her hush ! 
 
 To those musical trills and shakes ! 
 He has caught from the Blackbird his rich mellow tone, 
 
 From the Skylark the melody shrill; 
 And the notes of the Woodlark, the Thrush, and his own, 
 
 He varies and blends at will. 
 
 GARDEN WARBLER. 
 
 FAUVETTE. GARDEN FAUVET. GREATER PETTYCHAPS. 
 KETTLE- CREEPER. 
 
 FIGURE 23. 
 
 IENTIFIC i\ame,Motacilla or Sylvia hortensis, 
 from Hortus, a garden or orchard, such places 
 being the chief haunts of this sweet warbler, 
 whose musical powers are nearly equal to those of the 
 Blackcap. It is a small plain bird of retiring habits, 
 and therefore attracts but little attention. It may be 
 found by those who search for it, in the groves, gardens, 
 thickets, and plantations all through the country, from 
 the end of April to the end of August. 
 
 Its nest is loosely constructed of coarse grass, some- 
 times intermixed with wool and moss, and lined with 
 fine fibrous roots and hairs. The German naturalist
 
 Familiar Birds. 85 
 
 Bechstein says, that in his country, the opening of the 
 nest has a border of spiders' web, or silk from the 
 cocoon of some insect ; and Mr. Morris states that these 
 substances are used here to attach the structure to the 
 branches amid which it is built. The bird sometimes 
 builds on the ground, among tall grass or nettles, hence 
 the name Nettle-creeper ; sometimes in a thick low 
 bush, or among ivy stems against a wall, in which 
 situation Mr. Jesse observed a pair of these birds to 
 build three times in succession. The eggs are from 
 four to six in number, nine twelfths of an inch long, 
 by six and a half broad; the colour a dull greenish 
 white, clotted with light brown and grey. 
 
 The Garden Warbler generally rears two broods in a 
 season ; it lives chiefly on insects and worms, and soft 
 pulpy fruit like cherries, of which it is extremely fond.
 
 86 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WHITETHROAT. 
 
 GREATER WHITETHROAT. PEGGY WHITETHROAT. NET- 
 TLE-CREEPER. WHEY BEARD. WHEETIK-WHY. 
 CHURR. MUFF. MUFFIT. MUFTIE. CHARLIE MUF- 
 TIE. BEARDIE. WHEATIE. WHISKEY. BLETHER- 
 ING TAM. 
 
 FIGURE 24. 
 
 ijERE is a choice of names, many of them more 
 expressive than elegant. We cannot doubt 
 by the sound of some of them that the bird is 
 well known in Scotland, as it appears to be throughout 
 nearly the whole of Britain. It is perhaps the com- 
 monest of the Warblers, and is called by naturalists 
 Motacilia, or Sylvia cinerea, from the prevailing tint of 
 the plumage ; cinerea, in Latin, signifying ash-coloured. 
 The Whitethroat, which arrives in this country in 
 April, and leaves it in September, frequents hedges, 
 the outskirts of plantations, and borders of woods, and 
 any grounds where there are thickets and brushwood, 
 amid which it likes to build. 
 
 Its nest is wide, and loosely, yet strongly made, of 
 dry grass-stalks and other plants, and lined with fine 
 grass and hair. The eggs are four or five in number, 
 of a greenish white ground colour, with spots and
 
 Familiar Birds. 87 
 
 speckles of greenish grey and brown. Two, and some- 
 times three, broods are reared in a season. Although 
 generally very careful to conceal its nest, the bird has 
 been known to build in exposed situations, close to a 
 public road, or an occupied dwelling. Mr. Jesse men- 
 tions one which built on a vine close to a window. 
 Insects, worms, slugs, and soft fruit are the food of this 
 bird, which Macgillivray calls the White-throated 
 Warbler.
 
 88 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WOOD WARBLER, OR WREN. 
 
 YELLOW WARBLEK. YELLOW WILLOW WREN. LARGER 
 WILLOW WREN. GREEN WREN. WILLIE MUFTIE. 
 
 FIGURE 25. 
 
 OTACILLA, or Sylvia sylvicola is the scientific 
 name of this elegant and interesting bird, as 
 Sweet well terms it : the generic name comes 
 from the Latin words Sylva, a wood, and colo, to inhabit. 
 The French call the bird Bee-Jin sifflear, from siffler, 
 to hiss, whistle, or warble. This is a more gaily-tinted 
 bird than most of the Warblers, having a considerable 
 quantity of yellow and green about its plumage. Its 
 period of arrival in this country is from the middle of 
 April to the middle of May, and of departure therefrom 
 about the end of September. It is not a very uncom- 
 mon bird, although there are some parts of the country 
 where it is rarely or ever seen. It inhabits woods, 
 thickets, and gardens, and seems to prefer the neigh- 
 bourhood of trees of a large size. 
 
 It builds a domed nest of an oval shape, with a small 
 hole in the side for entrance, neatly interwoven of 
 grasses, leaves, and moss, and lined with fine grass and 
 hair; it is generally placed on the ground, and well 
 concealed by thick herbage. Mr. Sweet has found it 
 in the stump of a tree. The eggs are six or seven in 
 number ; eight twelfths of an inch long, by six twelfths
 
 Familiar Birds. 89 
 
 broad. The ground colour is white, thickly spotted 
 and speckled with purple, red, and grey. 
 
 This is entirely an insectivorous bird. It is very 
 active, and has a sharp shrill cry, resembling tzit-tzit ! 
 hence some naturalists call it SyUia sibillatrix, from 
 the Latin sibilo, to hiss : hence, too, our English word 
 sibilous. 
 
 WILLOW WARBLER, OR WREN. 
 
 GROUND WREN. HAY BIRD. HUCK-MUCK. 
 WILLIE MUFTIE. 
 
 FIGURE 26. 
 
 IENTIFIC name, Motacilla, or Sylvia trochi- 
 lus, from Sylva, a wood, and trochilus, a 
 Wren. This is a somewhat commoner bird 
 than the last, and is one of our earliest summer visit- 
 ants, generally arriving about the second week in April. 
 Its favourite places of resort are the borders of streams, 
 where osiers, alders, and willows best flourish; it is 
 also frequently found in gardens, and all kinds of thick 
 bushy places, especially where insects, its chief food, 
 are most abundant. It builds a large nest for its size, 
 generally of a flattish oval form, but varying consider- 
 ably in shape, according to the situation chosen. The
 
 90 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 component materials are outwardly, moss, fern, 
 feathers, and grass ; inwardly, feathers and hair ; it is 
 pretty closely woven, and the entrance is usually at the 
 side. 
 
 The eggs, six or seven in number, are of a roundish 
 form; in length, seven lines and a half; in breadth, 
 six lines. The colour varies considerably, but is most 
 commonly a pinkish white, with numerous small specks 
 of pale rusty red. Purely white eggs have been met 
 with in the nest of this bird, which is generally placed 
 on the ground, and carefully concealed among long 
 grass, brushwood, or rank weeds : it is often to be 
 found in a bank, beneath a thick hedge, near a wood. 
 The first brood of young are hatched by the end of 
 May or the beginning of June ; the second early in 
 August.
 
 Familiar Birds. 91 
 
 CHIFF CHAFF. 
 
 LESSER PETTYCHAPS. LEAST WILLOW WREN. CHIP- 
 CHOP. HAY BIRD. ARBOUR BIRD. 
 
 FIGURE 27. 
 
 |HIS bird bears a very close resemblance to the 
 Willow Warbler; it is however somewhat 
 smaller, and the wings are more rounded; 
 hence it is sometimes called the Short-winged Wood 
 Wren, by which name Macgillivray distinguishes it. 
 Its most common title is derived from its curious, but 
 not unpleasing song, of chiff-cliaff, chivy - chavy ; which 
 it utters while on the wing, in pursuit of insects its 
 principal food. Bechstein calls it the Arbour Bird, 
 perhaps because it prefers to build in thick leafy places. 
 The French natuialist, Temminck, terms it Sylvia rufa 
 one would think from rufus, red, but the bird has 
 little or no tinge of that colour about its plumage. 
 Motacilla, or Sylvia hippolais is the more common 
 scientific name ; the last word has been translated, " a 
 bird called a Hedge Sparrow." Bee-Jin veloce is a 
 French name for this bird, signifying swift rapid. 
 
 The nest of the Chiif Chaff is very like that of the 
 Willow Warbler, of an oval shape, with the entrance 
 generally at the side. It is composed of various mate- 
 rials, but chiefly of dried grass, moss, and dead leaves, 
 and lined with feathers. The eggs are commonly six
 
 92 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 or seven in number ; seven twelfths of an inch long, by 
 five and a half broad ; the ground colour is white, with 
 very small dots and spots of purplish red or brown. 
 There are sometimes two broods in the year. 
 
 " Chiff-chaff! Chivy-chavy !" 
 What a funny little bird ; 
 Was there ever such a warble 
 In the woodland heard ? 
 
 "Chiff-chaff! Chivy-chavy" 
 
 On the ear it comes again, 
 Faint and low, yet soft and pleasant 
 Is the gentle strain.
 
 Familiar Birds. 93 
 
 WREN 
 
 COMMON WREN. JENNY WREN. KITTY WREN. JIMPO. 
 FIGURE 28. 
 
 VERYBODY knows the poor little Jenny 
 Wren, with her short cocked-up tail and sharp 
 prying eyes ; in and out of the thicket she flits, 
 up and down the garden walk, and over the old wall 
 and back again, with surprising swiftness ; now picking 
 a spider from the crevice ; now snatching a slug from 
 the earth ; now feasting on seeds in the field ; and now 
 on fruit in the orchard. She is here, and there, and 
 everywhere, and she has a sweet song of her own, too, 
 full and melodious, and astonishingly loud for such a 
 little bird. Generally when on the wing, or hopping 
 about from place to place, she utters a short sharp chit- 
 chit ! and have you ever seen her run up a tree ? not 
 straight like a Woodpecker, but twisting round it cork- 
 screw fashion. Oh, she is a clever little climber, that 
 Jenny Wren ; and she builds a nest big enough one 
 would suppose for two or three families diminutive as 
 hers ; large and round like a ball, with a hole on one 
 side. It is made of almost anything that comes to 
 hand fern and moss, grass and small roots, twigs and 
 hay are all pressed into the service for the outer mate- 
 rials, but for the lining feathers are used soft and 
 warm for the little Wrenlings to lie upon. 
 
 The situations chosen for building, vary as much as
 
 94 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 the materials used ; sometimes it is a hole in the earth ; 
 hence the scientific name of the bird, Motacilla, or 
 Sylvia troglodytes, the last word being the 7 .dine of a 
 race of people who live in holes or caves ; sometimes it 
 's placed against the trunk of a tree at a considerable 
 height from the ground ; sometimes under a bank ; and 
 in any case where the nest is to be supported at the 
 side or above, the portion to be attached to the sup- 
 porting object is begun first, and the rest of the fabric 
 traced out, as it were. Most birds build from the 
 bottom of the nest, but the Wren, so E-ennie tells us, 
 sometimes departs from this rule, and seems to exer- 
 cise a discretionary power which approaches very near 
 to reason. 
 
 The following anecdote, taken from a very delightful 
 book, called ' A Journal of a Naturalist,' by Knapp, 
 will place the sagacity of a Wren in a yet stronger 
 light : " The bird had formed a hollow space in the 
 thatch on the inside of my cow-shed, in which it had 
 placed its nest by the side of a rafter, and finished it 
 with its usual neatness ; but, lest the orifice of its cell 
 should engage attention, it had negligently hung a 
 piece of moss on the straw-work, concealing the entrance, 
 and apparently proceeding from the rafter ; and so per- 
 fect was the deception, that I should not have noticed 
 it, though tolerably observant of such things, had not 
 the bird betrayed her secret by darting out." 
 
 To show what curious places the Wren sometimes 
 chooses for her nest, we may mention that Bechstein 
 speaks of one which he found in the sleeve of an old 
 coat. The eggs of this bird are generally of a white
 
 Familiar Birds. 95 
 
 colour, dotted with light red ; eight twelfths of an inch 
 long, six twelfths broad ; they are frequently as many 
 as eight in number, and how this small bird could 
 manage to feed such a company of young, has been a 
 subject of surprise. An old naturalist named Ray 
 ranks it among " those daily miracles of which we take 
 no notice." Wrens remain in this country the whole 
 year through, and in severe winters many of them perish. 
 Bishop Mant, in his poetical description of the British 
 months, speaks of 
 
 " The quick note of the russet Wren, 
 Familiar to the haunts of men, 
 He quits Ui hollow'd wall his bow'r, 
 And thro' the winter's gloomy hour 
 Sings cheerily : nor yet hath lost 
 His blitheness, chill'd by pinching frost ; 
 Nor yet is forc'd for warmth to cleave 
 To cavern'd nook, or straw-built eave. 
 Sing, little bird ! Sing on, design'd 
 A lesson for our anxious kind ; 
 That we, like thee, with heart's content 
 Enjoy the blessings God hath sent; 
 His bounty trust, perform his will, 
 Nor antedate uncertain ill ! " 
 
 The poet Wordsworth tells us that 
 
 " Among the dwellings framed by birds 
 
 In field or forest, with nice care, 
 Is none that with the little Wren's 
 In snugness may compare."
 
 96 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GOLDCREST. 
 
 GOLDEN-CRESTED, OR CROWNED WREN. 
 
 GOLDEN-CRESTED, OR CROWNED KINGLET. MARYGOLD 
 
 FINCH. 
 
 FIGURE 29. 
 
 1HIS is the tiniest of British, and indeed of 
 European birds, measuring not more than three 
 inches and a half long, with the tail, which is 
 about one inch and a quarter, so there is not much left 
 for the body. Some naturalists call it Regulus cristatus, 
 which is as much as to say, a little king with a crest ; 
 others Motacilla, or Sylvia Regulus ; and others again, 
 Regulus auricapellus , or vulgaris; aurum in Latin 
 means gold, vulgaris common; and this understood, 
 the reason of these terms will be evident. 
 
 The lovely little Goldcrest may be found all over this 
 kingdom, and all the year through, but then he must be 
 sought for generally in the dim woods and leafy thickets, 
 where much of the bright sunshine cannot enter, and a 
 pretty sight it is to see him darting about here and 
 there in search of insects, his golden crest glittering like 
 a speck of light. Sometimes he ventures out into the 
 open heaths among the furze bushes, and now and then 
 may be seen flitting among the rose trees and shrubs of 
 the garden. His song, although very sweet, is low and 
 weak j and his common call-note resembles the syllables 
 tzit, tzit, uttered quickly; this is most frequently
 
 Familiar Birds. 97 
 
 heard towards sunset, as if he were warning his friends 
 of the approach of night. 
 
 He makes the prettiest little round nest imaginable, 
 of moss and lichens, willow-down, spiders' webs, wool, 
 fine grass, and hair. I do not mean to say that he uses 
 all these materials at once, but he does use whichever of 
 them comes most readily to hand ; and he weaves the 
 nest very closely, and lines it with soft feathers, and 
 hangs it like a cradle to be rocked to and fro by the 
 wind, beneath the branch of a fir or some other tree, 
 most usually choosing an evergreen, as he builds very 
 early in the year, and would not find the necessary 
 shelter in other kinds. And would you think it ? 
 the saucy little Goldcrest is a thief; he has been known 
 to watch the Chaffinch, and slyly to abstract a portion 
 of the materials which that careful builder had collected 
 for its own habitation. 
 
 But of all the funny little eggs that ever were seen, 
 the Goldcrests are the funniest ; about as big as a good- 
 sized pea, and often of the same shape ; the colour is 
 reddish, or brownish white of various shades; there 
 may be four, five, six, seven, eight, aye, sometimes as 
 many as ten of them ; all snug and warm in the 
 rocking nest. And when the young are hatched, has 
 not the little Goldcrest a busy time of it then ? Up 
 and down, in and out they go, both father and mother, 
 scarcely two minutes being . suffered to elapse without 
 one of them returning with a gnat, or a spider, or an 
 ant's egg, or some such delicacy to that cradle full of 
 noisy gaping bills. 
 
 And oh ! what a courageous little bird is the Gold- 
 
 7
 
 98 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 crest! J. T. Wilkinson, of Walsh am Hall, Suffolk, 
 relates that on one occasion, when he ascended a fir tree 
 in his orchard, to look at a nest of this bird, the hen, 
 Avlrich was sitting, defended her charge with the utmost 
 firmness and resolution, pecking and flying at the in- 
 truder's hand until he withdrew it. The same autho- 
 rity speaks of a pair of these birds which built their 
 nest near the drawing-room window, and sat fast and 
 hatched their young, notwithstanding the noise of the 
 piano and other interruptions to which they were sub- 
 jected. A hen Goldcrest is also spoken of by Col. 
 Montagu, which would feed her young in a room, even 
 when the nest was taken in the hand ; the bird went 
 and returned with food about thirty-six times in the 
 hour, and worked away at this rate sixteen hours a 
 day. Here was prodigious labour for one little weak 
 bird; here was prodigious destruction, too, of insect 
 life. Let us see, thirty-six times sixteen make five 
 hundred and seventy-six. Such an industrious worker 
 deserves a song, and he shall have one. 
 
 'Mid the shadow of the pines, flitting here and there, 
 Lo ! the Golden-crested Wren glanceth through the air, 
 Like a fiery meteor, or a shooting star, 
 The tiniest of creatures that in, the forests are. 
 
 Never still a moment whisking to and fro 
 Now amid the topmost bough, now the roots helow ; 
 Now he perks his feathers up, now he twinks his eye, 
 Now emits a warble low, now a short sharp cry. 
 
 Lo ! the Golden-crested Wren, he's a happy bird, 
 Dwelling 'mid the solitude, where the boughs are stirred 
 By the gentle breezes, stealing in and out, 
 He their tuneful whispers understands, no doubt.
 
 Familiar Birds. 99 
 
 Soft and solemn music he hath ever near, 
 Like angelic voicings from a better sphere ; 
 Kind and tender greetings from his wedded love, 
 And the gentle cooings of the Cushat Dove. 
 
 Hath he not the Magpie, and the laughing Jay, 
 And the playful Squirrel all to make him gay ? 
 Pleasant sights and perfumes hath he not all these, 
 And bright gleams of sunshine, breaking through the trees i 
 
 As the tufted pine cones sporteth he among, 
 Cometh not the Wild-Bee murmuring a song, 
 Where around his dwelling, tassels all of gold, 
 Make it like a palace gorgeous to behold ? 
 
 When the tempest riseth, and the winds roar loud, 
 And the haughty pine trees unto earth are bowed 
 Lo ! secure he lieth in his feathered nest, 
 Fearing nought of danger, perfectly at rest. 
 
 Yes, he leads a pleasant life doth the Crested Wren. 
 Far away from noisy town, and the haunts of men ; 
 If no duties bound me where I free to roam 
 Gladly would I visit him, in his sylvan home.
 
 100 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GREAT TITMOUSE. 
 
 GREAT BLACK-HEADED TOMTIT. BLACK-CAP. OXEYE. 
 SIT-YE-DOWN. 
 
 FIGTJKE 30. 
 
 HIS bird may be termed the king of the genus 
 Parus, or Tit family, of which Ave have 
 several representatives in this country ; it has 
 sometimes been called the Parus hortensis, or Garden 
 Tit, but to this distinction it is no more entitled than 
 any other member of its family circle, as all the Tits 
 are fond of seeds and buds, and therefore haunters of 
 gardens. Parus major, the latter word signifying 
 greater, is the scientific name applied by nearly all 
 naturalists to the bird, which remains in this country 
 all the year round. The name oxeye, as well as Sit- 
 ye-down, has reference, Mr. Morris conjectures, to its 
 note bearing a supposed resemblance to these words ; 
 this is so loud, that it may be heard at the distance of 
 half a mile ; it has also been likened to the sharpening 
 of a saw. 
 
 The Great Tit wears a dress of yellow, and black, 
 and blue, and white, something like that of a harlequin, 
 and his actions correspond ; no bird is perhaps so full 
 of antics and strange manoeuvre ; it is in a state of 
 incessant activity, and in its search after insect food 
 assumes all manner of extraordinary positions; now 
 hanging with its head downwards, now all awry, twist-

 
 Familiar Birds. 101 
 
 ing and wriggling about like a winged snake, if there 
 were such a thing, might be supposed to do. Up the 
 trunk of the tree he runs, in and out among the branches, 
 down the other side, peering into every hole and cre- 
 vice; now dexterously extracting a spicier from its cell, 
 now a worm from the bud, and now a kernel from the 
 nut ; and now, to his shame be it spoken ! with his 
 strong sharp bill cracking the skull of some poor help- 
 less little bird, and feasting on the brains of his 
 victim. 
 
 The Great Tit is most frequently found in woods and 
 thickets, near to gardens and cultivated lands; it is aiv 
 early builder, and forms its nest of moss, feathers, leaves, 
 and hair loosely put together ; the place chosen is gene- 
 rally a hole in a tree or an old wall ; sometimes the 
 deserted nest of a Crow or Magpie is used ; and the 
 eggs, which vary in number from six to eleven, are of a 
 pure white colour, irregularly spotted with reddish 
 brown : they have been discovered, in a decayed tree, 
 on the dust of the wood alone. This bird has been 
 known to build in very curious places, such, for in- 
 stance, as a pump, both used and unused, the place for 
 exit and entrance being the orifice for the handle ; far 
 up among the rafters of a house ; in a window-frame, 
 the opening for the weight being the door- way ; and in 
 an inverted flower-pot. 
 
 The French call this bird Grosse Mesange, ou Char- 
 bonniere the first word signifying great, the second 
 Titmouse, the third collier, or coal merchant.
 
 102 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 BLUE TIT. 
 
 BLUE CAP. BLUE BONNET. BLUE MOPE. NUN. TOMTIT. 
 BILLY-BITEK. HICK-WALL. 
 
 FIGURE 31. 
 
 |HO that has been accustomed to traverse the 
 English woodlands, or to wander the fields 
 or roads near them, but has frequently paused 
 
 to listen to the shrill cliicka, chicha, chicka, chee, chce, 
 of the Parus cceruleus, as naturalists generally agree to 
 call the Blue Tit? and who that has caught a glimpse 
 of the lively little bird, but has admired its beautiful 
 plumage of cerulean tint, and agile movements, than 
 which nothing can be more graceful and interesting. 
 This is one of the commonest, as well as the prettiest 
 of the Tit family. Everybody knows the little Tomtit, 
 and everybody loves it, except the gardener, who looks 
 upon it as his greatest enemy, because it has a habit of 
 picking his buds to pieces a bad habit certainly, but 
 then Tom is looking for insects, many thousands of 
 which he destroys, and thus prevents far more ravage 
 and destruction in the garden than he himself commits. 
 The nest of the Blue Tit is composed of moss, grass, 
 and wool, and lined with hair and feathers. The eggs 
 are from six to ten or more in number ; of a reddish 
 white colour, irregularly spotted with light red; the 
 size is seven twelfths of an inch long, by six twelfths 
 broad. As many as eighteen eggs have been found in
 
 Familiar Birds. 103 
 
 the nest of this bird, which is generally placed in situa- 
 tions similar to those occupied hy the species last 
 described, and sometimes in even more curious places. 
 
 Speaking of one which built in the hollow of a pump, 
 Bishop Stanley says, " It happened that during the 
 time of building, and laying the eggs, the pump had 
 not been in use ; and when again set going the female 
 was sitting; and it was naturally supposed that the 
 motion of the handle would drive her away; the young 
 brood, however, were hatched safely without any other 
 misfortune than the loss of a part of the tail of the 
 sitting bird, which was rubbed off by the friction of the 
 pump handle." 
 
 Mr. Hewitson relates that once when out on an en- 
 tomological, that is insect-hunting, excursion, he broke 
 to pieces the decayed stump of a tree, within which a 
 Blue Tit was sitting upon fourteen eggs, on which she 
 remained immoveable until forcibly taken off. He also 
 mentions a pair of these birds, which built their nest, 
 hatched their eggs, and reared their young, ten in 
 number, in an earthen bottle, through the neck of 
 which, one inch in diameter, the birds had to pass in 
 and out. The bottle was fifteen inches deep, and 
 one is puzzed to imagine how the birds could manage 
 to ascend through so narrow an aperture. The Irish 
 naturalist, Thompson, mentions a similar case in 
 an ornamental jar; and another is spoken of by Mr. 
 Poole, in which the male bird used to feed the female, 
 while sitting, through the neck of the jar. But the 
 strangest place of all for this or any other bird to build 
 in, was within the jaws of the skeleton of a man who
 
 104 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 had been executed for murder, and was hung in chains : 
 this was a grim kind of habitation truly ! but it had nc 
 terrors for the innocent birds. 
 
 When the nest of this bird is built in the trunk of a 
 tree, great pains are taken by the little architect to 
 hollow out first a convenient passage, and then an inner 
 cavity for the nursery, and this is all as smoothly done 
 as if by the hand of a skilful carpenter ; it is said, too, 
 that the chips are not left in a heap, as they would 
 naturally fall close to the spot, but are scattered about, 
 and some even carried to a considerable distance. An 
 instance of this kind is related by Mr. Saul, in the 
 ' Zoologist,' that gentleman having watched the pro- 
 ceedings of a pair of Blue Tits while preparing the 
 chamber for their young. 
 
 Nests of this bird, and others of similar habits, have 
 been found in trees apparently sound when taken to the 
 saw-pit to cut into planks : they must have been there 
 a very long time, for the entrance passage to have grown 
 up again, and become solid like the other wood. The 
 Blue Tit frequently uses the same nest year after year ; 
 it has been known to do so for twelve successive years : 
 we wonder what rent he paid to the landlord. 
 
 If, as sometimes is the case, two broods are reared in 
 the same year, different nests are said to be invariably 
 used. This is a bird of quality, and must have his 
 spring and autumn residences, forsooth !
 
 Familiar Birds. 105 
 
 LONG -TAILED TIT. 
 
 LONG-TAILED TITMOUSE, PIE, MAG, OR MUFFLIN. BOTTLE 
 TIT OR TOM. LOXG TOM. LONG POD. MUM RUFFIN. 
 HUCK-MUCK. POKE PUDDING. 
 
 FIGURE 32. 
 
 BEAUTIFUL bird, with a great string of ugly 
 names, longer than its tail, which tail is almost 
 as long as its whole body, and distinguishes it 
 from the rest of the Tit family. This caudal appendage 
 has moreover been laid hold of by naturalists, who have 
 found it a convenient handle, and so called the bird 
 Pants caudatus, meaning, literally, the Tit that has a 
 tail, as if other Tits had no tail at all, or none worth 
 speaking of a base libel this on the rest of the family. 
 The Mufflin is in truth an extremely beautiful and 
 interesting bird, with its snowy pate, throat, and breast, 
 delicately shaded off into grey, with a faint red flush, 
 which deepens as it spreads up the back, until it is lost 
 in the glossy black of the neck, extending from thence 
 on either side of the head to the bill in two broad streaks, 
 that enclose the eye, and give the bird a peculiar quaint 
 and knowing look. Black and white are the wings and 
 tail, looking like rich velvet, embroidered and edged 
 with silver. Oh, it is a very beautiful bird ; and such 
 a lively fellow too ; his long tail seems no hindrance to 
 him at all ; but he whisks about as the other Tits do 
 just as if he had not one to carry. What he does with
 
 106 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 it in that curious nest of his, shaped like a long bottle, 
 one cannot imagine, unless he pokes it up through the 
 hole near the top, which serves at once for door and 
 window. 
 
 No other English bird builds such a nest as the Bottle 
 Tit ; what a huge affair it is ; and the shape of it, how 
 preposterous ! It is generally from five to seven inches 
 long, by three or four wide, and looks, hanging beneath 
 the branch of a tree or sticking close to the trunk, like 
 a bundle of green or grey moss that has grown there or 
 accumulated by accident ; but peep inside, and see what 
 a soft downy chamber it is lined with feathers, aye, an 
 inch thick, and quite waterproof : somebody took the 
 pains to count how many feathers there were in one of 
 these nests, and found no less than two thousand three 
 hundred and seventy-nine. Pretty good work that for 
 a pair of little birds to accomplish in a fortnight, when 
 the bleak winds of March were whistling through the 
 nearly naked woods. But it was a labour of love with 
 them ; and it is astonishing how much both birds and 
 boys may do when their hearts are in the work. 
 
 Some naturalists have said that the nest of this bird 
 has two openings, like a front and back door, but ex- 
 perience goes to prove the contrary ; the cases are very 
 rare in which such a construction has been observed. 
 The moss and lichens of which the fabric is composed, 
 are bound together and fixed to the tree by means of 
 spiders' webs and the silk spun by moths and butter- 
 flies ; frequently small fragments of bark and pieces of 
 wool are woven into it. The eggs are sometimes en- 
 tirely white, but generally spotted a little with pale red.
 
 Familiar Birds. 107 
 
 They are about the size of a pea, and vary in number 
 from ten to twelve; as many as sixteen have been found 
 in one nest, but this, it is supposed, was the produce of 
 more than one pair of birds ; instances having occurred 
 of several pairs going shares in a single habitation. 
 
 Besides the three Tits which we have described, there 
 are in this country four other species belonging to the 
 Tit family ; these are the Cole Tit (Parus ater) ; the 
 Crested Tit (Parus cristatus) ; the Marsh Tit (Parus 
 palustris ) ; and the Bearded Tit (Parus barbatus}; the 
 last having a long tail like the Muiflin, from which, 
 however, it differs widely in the colour of its plumage, 
 and in many other important particulars; it is often 
 called the Least Butcher Bird, being thought by some 
 naturalists to resemble the Shrikes more than the Tits. 
 To each of these beautiful and lively birds we should 
 like to dedicate a song, but our limited space not per- 
 mitting this, we must be content with one only, which 
 must do for the whole family, to the most common 
 member of which it is addressed : 
 
 The little Tomtit ! The little Tomtit ! 
 
 What a joyous bird is he ! 
 And he loveth about in the sun to flit, 
 
 And to perch on the orchard tree : 
 When the shining buds begin to peep, 
 With his sharp tzit, tzit ! and his shrill cheep, cheep ! 
 From morn till night 'tis his to keep, 
 
 As busy as busy can be. 
 
 The little Titmouse ! The little Titmouse ! 
 
 What a comical fellow is he ! 
 With his head awry, and his half-closed eye, 
 
 As much as to say " I see ;
 
 108 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 I see the maggot within the green bud ; 
 You cannot, although your sight may be good, 
 I'm sharper than you, for I'm searching for food' 
 And I'm hungry very ! chee, chee I" 
 
 The little Tomtit has a little black cap, 
 
 And oh ! such a twinkling eye ! 
 And his tiny wings they go flip-flap, 
 
 As he utters his shrill sharp cry ; 
 And he looks as proud as an eagle can, 
 That sits on a rock the sun to scan ; 
 And he says to the gardener " Come, my man, 
 
 We ought to be friends, you and I !" 
 
 But the gardener likes not the little Tomtit, 
 
 For he sees the ground beneath 
 With buds bestrewn, and he vows at noon, 
 
 Ere night, to be his death. 
 But surely this is a cruel speech, 
 For a worm hath eaten the heart of each j 
 If a fatal shot should the poor bird reach, 
 
 'Tis the innocent sufFereth.
 
 Familiar Birds. 109 
 
 PIED WAGTAIL. 
 
 WHITE, BLACK AND WHITE, WATER, OR WINTER WAG- 
 TAIL. DISH-WASHER. PEGGY WASH-DISH. 
 
 FIGURE 33. 
 
 N scientific language, this bird has been called 
 Motacilla Yarrellii, after an English naturalist 
 Yarrell; it appears to be the same species 
 which Linneeus named Motacilla alba, or white ; but as 
 there is some doubt about this, we cannot positively 
 assert it. A well-known bird to the country people of 
 Great Britain generally, is the Peggy Wash-dish; so 
 called, we suppose, from its habit of frequenting the 
 banks of running streams and other watery places. It 
 has a slender elegant shape and a long tail, which it 
 frequently flirts up in a very curious manner while 
 hunting for insects in the mud, as if afraid of soiling it. 
 The Wagtail is a very active bird ; it runs with great 
 swiftness, and flies from place to place with short flights, 
 which have a wave-like motion ; it frequently turns and 
 returns, as attracted here and there by the tiny winged 
 creatures on which it chiefly feeds. It also hovers over 
 the water, skims along the surface, and catches with 
 great dexterity the minnows and other small inhabitants 
 of the streams and ponds, to which, however, the bird 
 by no means confines itself, being frequently seen in the 
 meadows and in the garden plots; sometimes in the rick- 
 yard or on the house-top hunting for flies. The name
 
 110 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 Wagtail is derived from a peculiar fanning motion of 
 the tail which the bird makes as if to steady itself when 
 it alights. Its note is little more than a short sweet 
 twitter, which is uttered very frequently. 
 
 The nest is composed of stems of grass, leaves, and 
 small roots, with a lining of wool, hair, thistle-down, or 
 feathers; it is loosely put together, and placed in a great 
 variety of situations; sometimes in a hole in a wall or 
 hollow of a tree; in a bank overhanging a stream or 
 under the parapet of a bridge; in the side of a hay, 
 faggot, peat, or other stack ; it has been found both in 
 a grass and turnip field. Mr. Jesse tells of one built 
 in a workshop of a manufactory at Taunton, near the 
 wheel of a lathe, which was frequently in motion ; the 
 shop was occupied by braziers, and there in the midst of 
 the din, sat the bird and hatched and reared her young. 
 In a quarry close by where men were working, and 
 under the platform at the top of a coal-pit, with the 
 trampling of feet overhead and the jar of the coals drawn 
 up from below, the parent Wagtails have been known 
 to construct their nest, and lay their five or six light 
 grey or yellowish-white eggs, spotted with darker grey 
 or brown, and measuring nine twelfths of an inch long, 
 and seven twelfths and a quarter broad. They generally 
 build about the middle of April, and sometimes rear 
 two broods. 
 
 Peggy, Peggy wasli-the-dish ! 
 
 By the sandy bank she sits, 
 
 Or across the stream she flits, 
 Catching, now and then, a fish ; 
 
 Living ever by her wits, 
 Who a merrier life could wish ?
 
 Familiar Birds. Ill 
 
 GREY WAGTAIL. 
 
 WINTER, OK YELLOW WAGTAIL. 
 FIGURE 34. 
 
 HIS is not so common a bird as the last, and 
 therefore has not been honoured with such a 
 variety of popular names. It is a very 
 beautiful bird, the plumage of the breast and upper 
 part of the tail being of a bright yellow, hence its 
 scientific name, Motacilla sulphureus, that is, sulphur- 
 coloured. The habits of this bird are much like those 
 of the last; it is, however, somewhat more shy, and 
 generally builds its nest on the ground, although, like 
 its pied relative, it sometimes exhibits a curious taste 
 in this matter, choosing at one time the hollow of a 
 spout, at another the shelf of an outhouse, or the 
 window-sill of a dairy, or the switches of a railway, 
 within two or three inches of every passing train. The 
 eggs are from five to eight in number, and usually of 
 about the same size and colour as those of the pied 
 species, like which too, they vary considerably in both 
 these particulars. 
 
 The other Wagtails known in this country are the 
 White Wagtail, thought by some to be but a variety of 
 the pied species ; the Grey-headed Wagtail, which 
 naturalists call Motacilla neglecta, or the neglected;
 
 112 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 and the Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava) ; they are all 
 much alike in their habits, and form a most interesting 
 family group of birds. 
 
 " At hand," says Bishop Mant, " I greet 
 The nimble Wagtail's brisk te-wheet !" 
 But whether 'tis the Wagtail Grey, 
 Or Pied, the Bishop does not say. 
 Nor matters it, although it be 
 One other of the family j 
 For all are brisk, and full of glee, 
 And whether flitting in the sun, 
 Or here and there they nimbly run, 
 They aro a pleasant sight to see.
 
 Familiar Birds. 113 
 
 TREE PIPIT. 
 
 PIPIT. FIELD, LESSER FIELD, MEADOW, GRASSHOPPER, 
 LESSER-CRESTED, SHORT-HEELED FIELD, OR TREE 
 LARK. FIELD TITLING. 
 
 FIGURE 35. 
 
 |HIS is a migratory bird, arriving in England 
 near the latter end of April, and leaving us 
 again in September. Its food consists of flies, 
 caterpillars, grasshoppers, worms, and small seeds. It 
 has a sweet low warble of its own, with but little 
 variety in it, something like tzee, tzee, tzee, often 
 repeated. Some naturalists call the bird Alauda 
 trimalis, the first word signifying a Lark, and the last 
 the same as the English word trivial, that is small, 
 insignificant ; others term it Anthus arboreus, that is, a 
 little bird, or a Pipit, belonging to trees. 
 
 The nest of this bird is placed on the ground amid 
 woods and plantations, generally sheltered by a tuft of 
 grass, or the rank herbage of a hedge-row, or a flowery 
 bank Mr. Neville Wood found one fixed in the lower 
 brancnes of a small thick bush. The materials used in 
 the construction are mosses, with fibrous roots and dried 
 grass ; fine grass and a few leaves form the lining : it 
 measures about three inches across, and the sides are 
 about an inch in thickness. The eggs, four or five in 
 number, are generally of a pale greyish colour, with a 
 
 8
 
 114 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 faint tinge of purple, and spots of purplish brown or 
 red; the colour, however, varies greatly, as does also 
 the size, the average of which appears to be seven 
 twelfths of an inch in length, by nine twelfths in 
 breadth. 
 
 The Tree Pipit builds in a tuft of: grass, 
 
 Surrounded by hedge-row flowers, 
 And his days of sunshine merrily pass, 
 
 Or there in woodland bowers ; 
 And he stays not till winter strips the tree j 
 For the Pipit a wise little bird is he 1
 
 Familiar Birds. 115 
 
 MEADOW PIPIT. 
 
 TITLARK. TITLING. MEADOW TITLING. PIPIT, OR 
 MEADOW LARK. MOSS CHEEPER. GREY CHEEPER. 
 LING BIRD. 
 
 FIGURE 36. 
 
 |HIS is a more common bird than the last, and 
 remaining with us the whole year through, is 
 of course better known ; for as adversity tries 
 and shows the character of man, so does the season of 
 cold and scarcity reveal most fully the habits and in- 
 stincts of the wild creatures. Everywhere throughout 
 Great Britain is to be found the Anthus or Alauda 
 pratensis, the Meadow Pipit or Lark, and in all kinds 
 of situations : hill or valley ; marsh or moorland : shady 
 woods, and meadows open to the sunshine, are alike 
 the home and pleasure grounds of this little olive brown 
 bird, with the whitish speckled breast, and sharp 
 restless eye. On the summits of the highest moun- 
 tains ; in the depths of the deepest valleys ; on the 
 sandy sea-shore, and far inland, where the solemn sound 
 of the rolling billows is never heard ; in the near 
 neighbourhood of busy towns, and away in the wilder- 
 ness, where the foot of man seldom intrudes, amid the 
 gorse, and the ling, and the purple heather, and the tall 
 waving grasses, the Titlark sings its cheerful song, soft 
 and musical, though, like its namesake of the tree, but 
 little varied. Peep-peep ! it goes, while hovering over
 
 116 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 its nest on the wing, or alighting with a gentle sweep 
 on a low bush or a rail, where it stands awhile, flirting 
 its tail about like a Wagtail Peep-peep, then Peep pit 
 Pipit as if calling its own name. If alarmed, it 
 utters a sharp tritz, tritz ! and flies off, sometimes with 
 apparent effort, as if wounded, to entice the intruder 
 from its nest, which is placed on, or close to, the ground, 
 and is composed of dried grass, lined with finer grass 
 and a few hairs ; sometimes a little moss is used in the 
 construction. The eggs are from four to six in number, 
 and scarcely any two sets are exactly alike in colour ; 
 sometimes the ground tint is reddish brown or reddish 
 white ; sometimes a yellowish brown ; and sometimes a 
 pale blue or grey ; in all cases they are mottled and 
 marked with deeper brown, especially near the larger 
 end : the average length is nine twelfths of an inch, 
 breadth seven twelfths. 
 
 This bird shares with the Hedge Sparrow the honour, 
 if such it may be called, of most frequently hatching 
 and rearing the young of the Cuckoo. The Irish 
 naturalist, Thompson, relates a remarkable instance of 
 sagacity with reference to the Titlark, as the bird is 
 perhaps most commonly called, which we ought to quote 
 here. It is to the effect that a nest being found by 
 some truant boys at the side of a drain in a field, was 
 by them deprived of the grassy covering which con- 
 cealed it. On visiting the spot the day after the 
 occurrence, it was found that a quantity of withered 
 grass had been laid regularly across the nest, so as com- 
 pletely to hide it ; this was removed, and out flew the 
 bird. On the next day again the grass was found
 
 Familiar Birds. 117 
 
 similarly placed as before, and beneath it was a small 
 aperture by which the little architect made her entrance 
 and exit ; she had clearly done her best to repair the 
 mischief, and screen her nest from observation. Moss 
 Cheeper is the name by which this bird is generally 
 known in Ireland, the term having reference to the 
 moss or peat covering the ground which it mostly in- 
 habits, and also to its call-note cheep ! This name also 
 applies to it in Scotland, and in some parts of Ireland 
 it is called Wekeen, referring probably to the double ee 
 sound of its note. 
 
 Besides the Meadow and Tree Pipits, which are 
 frequently confounded, there are three other species of 
 British birds which are commonly placed in the Anihus 
 or Pipit genus : these are Richard's Pipit (Anthus 
 Ricardi), a rare and beautiful bird, very like a Lark ; 
 the Red-throated Pipit (Anthus montanus), pertaining 
 to mountains, also rare ; and the Rock Pipit {Anthus 
 aquaticus), from aqua, water, because it frequents 
 watery places ; this is by no means an uncommon bird, 
 and also closely resembles the Larks, to which the 
 Pipits are nearly allied. 
 
 The Mead Pipit tarries the whole year through, 
 
 Like a firm arid steadfast friend j 
 When the gales are soft, and the sties are blue, 
 
 When the gales are keen, and the black clouds bend 
 Over the earth j the bird is near, 
 With his cheerful note to gladden the ear.
 
 118 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 SKY LARK. 
 
 LAVEROCK. FIELD, OR COMMON LARK. 
 FIGURE 37. 
 
 |HA.T a striking propf is it of the goodness of 
 the Great Creator of the universe, that every- 
 thing which is most beautiful and loveable, 
 and pleasing to the senses, is also common ; the bright 
 warm sunshine, the cool fresh breezes, the lovely shapes, 
 the rich hues, and delicious perfume of flowers, and a 
 hundred 'other sources of innocent enjoyment, are all 
 common. Every day and every hour we may listen to 
 the melody of birds, and, as the American poet says, 
 may 
 
 " Go abroad, rejoicing in the joy 
 Of beautiful and well-created things." 
 
 The woods are full of music, and there is nothing to 
 pay for hearing it, for it is common to all ; the streams 
 that glide sparkling in the sunshine, every thirsty lip 
 may drink of them ; and the daisies and buttercups 
 nature's gold and silver every child may gather them, 
 and grow rich with the treasures of the earth. And up 
 in the air there sings the Lark sings all over the land, 
 and all day long, and a great part of the year through, 
 the commonest of feathered songsters, and perhaps the 
 very sweetest ; at all events the most cheerful and glad-
 
 42 
 
 * ' 
 
 _ .* ' 
 
 . -
 
 Familiar Birds. 119 
 
 some of any. Let my young readers, then, never despise 
 common things, for as we said before, they are the most 
 beautiful and loveable. 
 
 This Sky Lark, now this Alauda arvensis, or Lark 
 of the Fields, as the naturalists call it up he springs, 
 while the morning dew lies fresh upon the grass, and 
 he soars and sings " as if he had learned music and 
 motion from an angel," so says one of our old divines, 
 named Jeremy Taylor, and we only wish we had space 
 to repeat to our readers one tenth or one hundredth 
 part of the beautiful things that have been said and 
 sung about this plain little sober-coloured common bird, 
 the Sky Lark, which builds its nest upon the ground 
 in the corn or the hay field, or in the open pasture ; 
 just a little withered grass loosely put together, and 
 lined with some finer fibres, placed in a hollow, and 
 but slightly shrouded from observation, containing four 
 or five eggs of a greenish grey colour, freckled over 
 with light brown ; some ten and a half twelfths of an 
 inch long, by eight and a half broad ; and if these are 
 not crushed by the careless foot,, or broken by the 
 mower's scythe, or taken to be threaded on a string by 
 the truant schoolboy shame upon him for the deed ! 
 out of them will come in due time, a choir of songsters 
 that will one day sing at Heaven's gate, as Shakspere 
 has it, and fill the air with melody. 
 
 But let not my readers think that the Lark is sent 
 upon earth only to please the ear : from every object in 
 nature, even the most dull and inanimate, high and 
 holy lessons are to be learned ; and this bird has been 
 especially dwelt on by poets and moralists as one that
 
 120 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 teaches many such lessons as a pious and humble mind 
 would gladly receive. Thus Young, in his ' Night 
 Thoughts,' tells us that 
 
 " Pride, like the Eagle, builds among the clouds, 
 While pleasure, Lark-like, nests upon the ground." 
 
 And James Montgomery, classing together the two 
 sweetest feathered songsters, says 
 
 " The bird that soars on highest wing, 
 
 Builds on the ground her lowly nest j 
 And she that doth most sweetly sing, 
 
 Sings in the shade when all things rest ; 
 In Lark and Nightingale we see 
 What honour hath humility." 
 
 The Sky Lark generally rears two broods in the year, 
 the young of the first being fledged by about the end 
 of June, and the second late in August, or early in 
 September. It is related by Mr. Blyth that on one 
 occasion, when some mowers had shaven off the top of 
 the nest of this bird, without injuring the parent, she 
 sat fast while they levelled the grass around her, and 
 in about an hour afterwards it was found that she had 
 constructed a dome of grass over the nest, leaving an 
 aperture on one side for ingress and egress. Several 
 instances are upon record of the Sky Lark's having 
 moved its eggs and young to a safer spot, when danger 
 threatened them, the long claws of the bird enabling it 
 to do this without much apparent difficulty. 
 
 Any one who has noticed the upward flight of the 
 Lark has observed that it ascends spirally, that is, as if 
 it were following the windings of an invisible cork-
 
 Familiar Birds. 121 
 
 screw ; up it goes, soaring and singing, until it becomes 
 a mere speck in the air, where the dazzled eye can 
 scarcely follow it, and if we were to search the ground, 
 in a direct line beneath this musical mote in the sun, 
 it is likely that the nest might be found, with the hen 
 bird sitting upon it, listening to the voice of her mate, 
 who will presently come down straight, as if drawn by 
 a string, to that home of love and happiness so well 
 described by the Scottish poet Grahame : 
 
 " On tree, or bush, no Lark is ever seen : 
 The daisied lee he loves, where tufts of grass 
 Luxuriant crown the ridge ; there, with his mate, 
 He founds their lowly Louse of withered bents, 
 And coarsest speargrass ; next, the inner work 
 With finer, and still finer fibres lays, 
 Rounding it curious with his speckled breast. 
 How strange this untaught art ! it is the gift, 
 The gift innate of Him, without whose will, 
 Not even a sparrow falleth to the ground."
 
 122 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 WOOD LARK. 
 
 FIGURE 38. 
 
 j]HIS is the Alauda arborea of most naturalists ; 
 the Alouette lulu of the French, so called, we 
 are told, from a singularly mournful cry which 
 it utters in winter, resembling the syllables lu-lu long 
 drawn out : the meaning of the Latin phrases our 
 readers will understand, having had them before ex- 
 plained. Alouette is the French for Lark. This bird 
 is a very sweet songster, but it chiefly sings in retired, 
 woody places, and has a plaintive, rather than a loud 
 song. It is not nearly so plentiful as the Sky Lark, 
 and in some parts of the country is not found at all. 
 
 It builds its nest on the ground, beneath a bush, or 
 behind a tuft of grass, of the same materials as its soar- 
 ing relative, with the addition of a little hair, and lays 
 four or five eggs of a pale greenish-white ground, 
 spotted and speckled with dull reddish brown: they 
 are nine twelfths of an inch long, by seven twelfths 
 broad. April and July appear to be the most usual 
 months when the eggs are laid, there being frequently 
 two broods in the year. Mudie thinks that the reason 
 why Wood Larks are not so numerous, in proportion 
 to the number of eggs laid, as most other species, is 
 that they build in so inclement a season, and on barren 
 exposed places, so that they are frequently destroyed.
 
 Familiar Birds. 123 
 
 BUNTING. 
 
 COMMON, OR CORN BUNTING. BUNTING LARK. 
 FIGURE 39. 
 
 |HE Buntings form a sort of connecting link 
 between the Larks and Finches; they are 
 strong, hardy birds, with no great powers of 
 song, and feed upon insects, seeds, and grain. Natural- 
 ists have placed them in a family group, under the 
 generic term Emberiza : the specific name of the Com- 
 mon Bunting is miliaria, because it feeds much upon 
 millet. It is found in most parts of this country, and 
 in the Scottish Islands is generally called the Sparrow. 
 Its note is harsh and unmusical, consisting of the sylla- 
 bles chack, chit, uttered rapidly. Flocks of these birds 
 congregate in the winter about the stack-yards, and help 
 themselves freely from the corn ricks. 
 
 They generally build their nest in April, placing it 
 on the ground, or but slightly elevated above it, amid 
 long grass, or in a low bush, or beneath a bank. It is 
 composed of small roots, straws, and grasses, and lined 
 with the finer parts of the same materials, with some 
 moss and hair : it is large, thick, and somewhat shal- 
 low, tolerably neat in appearance, although by no means 
 closely woven. 
 
 The eggs are generally four in number, rarely five or 
 six; they are of a blunt oval shape; ten and a half 
 twelfths of an inch long, by about eight twelfths broad ; 
 the ground colour is usually greyish white, streaked 
 and spotted with purple and brown of various shades.
 
 124 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 BLACK-HEADED BUNTING. 
 
 RING, REED, OR PASSERINE BUNTING. REED, WATER, 
 OR MOUNTAIN SPARROW. RING BIRD, OR FOWL. 
 BLACK BONNET. CHINK. 
 
 FIGURE 40. 
 
 IJHE scientific name of this bird is Emberiza 
 schceniclus , the latter term meaning a water- 
 bird, probably, says Mr. Morris, from scoinus, 
 a rush. This, and several of its popular names, point 
 out the situations in which we are to look for the Black 
 Bonnet, and we find in the latter term a sufficiently 
 evident mark of distinction. King Bird refers, we sup- 
 pose, to the white ring round the neck, which in the 
 cock, for the hen has a brown pate, contrasts beauti- 
 fully with the glossy black covering the top and sides 
 of the head. This Bunting is by no means an uncom- 
 mon bird here, and it may sometimes be seen far away 
 from the streams and marshy places, which it commonly 
 frequents, and where its nest is usually placed on the 
 ground, among coarse grass, weeds, sedge, or rushes; 
 sometimes it may be found in a furze or gorse bush, at 
 a considerable distance from the water ; and it has 
 been discovered, though not often, supported on a mass 
 of matted reeds, just over the water, at an elevation of, 
 perhaps, two feet or so. 
 
 The nest is composed of grass and fragments of 
 rushes, lined with the down of the reed, a little moss, 
 fine grass, or hair. The eggs are four or five in num-
 
 Familiar Birds. 125 
 
 ber, of a pale purplish, greenish, or brownish white, 
 agreeably spotted with a darker shade of the same; 
 they are of a longish oval form, tapering off finely at 
 each end ; they are nine and a half twelfths of an inch 
 long, by seven and a half broad, and are generally laid 
 about the first week in May : a second brood is some- 
 times produced in July. 
 
 Mr. Salmon, of Thetford, a contributor to ' The 
 Magazine of Natural History,' relates that, walking in 
 the spring of the year among some rushes, growing by 
 a river, his attention was arrested by observing a Black- 
 headed Bunting shuffling through the rushes, and 
 trailing along the ground, as if one of her legs or 
 wings were broken. He followed her to see the result, 
 and the bird having led him to some considerable dis- 
 tance, took wing; no doubt much rejoiced to find her 
 stratagem had been successful in preserving her brood, 
 consisting of five young ones, which he aftenvards 
 found by the side of a clump of grass, which almost 
 screened it from view. This artifice is frequently re- 
 sorted to by birds to lead intruders from their nests. 
 Several such instances are mentioned in our little work, 
 and many more might be quoted to show the care and 
 solicitude of the feathered creatures for the safety of 
 their young. There is no prettier sight in nature than 
 to watch the Black-headed Buntings flitting about 
 among the slender reeds and velvet-headed rushes, 
 which bend and sway to and fro as the birds cling to 
 them, and open and shut the feathers of their tails 
 quickly, so that the white portions flash upon the view 
 for a moment like a gleam of light, and are gone 
 again.
 
 126 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 YELLOW-HAMMER. 
 
 YELLOW BUNTING. YELLOW YELDRING, YOLDING, OR 
 YOWLEY. YELLOW YELDROCK, YOLKRING, YOIT, OR 
 YITE. SKITE. DEVIL'S BIRD. 
 
 FIGURE 41. 
 
 j]E have already seen that there are some very 
 ugly names applied to very pretty birds, but 
 surely our beautiful and well-known Yellow- 
 hammer has the ugliest of all: what could possess 
 people to load it with such a string of harsh and dis- 
 agreeable epithets ? The scientific name of the bird is 
 soft and pleasing enough Emberiza citrinella; it glides 
 out of the mouth without any effort, and falls upon the 
 ear with a musical cadence ; not so, however, does the 
 note of our golden-plumed friend a harsh chit, chit, 
 chirr, gradually ascending, until it becomes quite a 
 shriek. In Scotland it has been translated into Deil, 
 Deil, Deil take ye ! addressed, it is supposed, to those 
 who plunder the bird of its eggs or young ; and hence 
 the most disagreeable of the above names. We are, 
 not learned in bird language, but hardly think this can 
 be the right rendering; such language could never 
 surely come out of an innocent bird's beak, however 
 much excited by rage or sorrow. 
 
 Yellow-hammers we have all seen, and all admired ; 
 there is not a road-side hedge, along which you can
 
 Familiar Birds. 17 
 
 walk, but out qf.it one or a pair of them will occasion- 
 ally fly j and the nest, you may be sure, is not far off. 
 It is rather a bulky affair, somewhat loosely built of 
 moss, small twigs, roots, and hair the finer materials 
 forming the lining ; it is placed on a bank, beneath a 
 bush, or in a clump of grass. The eggs are of a pale 
 purplish white colour, streaked and speckled with dark 
 reddish brown ; that is, generally, for they vary con- 
 siderably, having been found of a pale stone colour, 
 and even white, with delicate markings, like fine marble. 
 They are in length about ten twelfths of an inch ; in 
 breadth, eight twelfths ; in number, four or five, occa- 
 sionally six. The young are seldom able to fly before 
 the second week in June : two broods are sometimes 
 reared. 
 
 Mr. Thompson relates that in the garden of a friend 
 of his near Belfast, a pair of these birds built their nest 
 at the edge of a gravel walk, and hatched four young 
 ones, three of which were destroyed ; when the nest 
 being removed to a place of greater safety, the old birds 
 still kept to it, until their last nestling was able to fly. 
 Mr. Salmon found one of these nests at the height of 
 seven feet from the ground, in a broom tree ; and Mr. 
 Hewitson another at the height of six feet in a spruce 
 fir. Grain, and the seeds of grasses and other plants 
 form the principal food of this bird, whose specific name 
 citrinella, is derived from citrus, a citron or lemon tree, 
 probably on account of the colour of its plumage. 
 
 The other Buntings known in this country are the 
 Snow Bunting (Emberiza nivalis), a very beautiful 
 bird, found chiefly in the north ; the Lapland Bunting,
 
 128 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 or Finch (E. lapponica), an extremely rare species with 
 us ; the Cirl Bunting (E. cirlus), distinguished by its 
 black throat, also rare ; and the Ortolan Bunting {E. 
 hortulana), from hortus, a garden, a bird with orange 
 tawny breast, of which only a few specimens have been 
 taken in Great Britain. It is thus that Clare describes 
 the nest of the Yellow-hammer : 
 
 " Just by the wooden bridge a bird flew up, 
 Scared by the cow-boy as he scrambled down 
 To reach the misty dewberry, Let us stoop 
 And seek its nest. The brook we need not dread 
 'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown, 
 As it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed. 
 Aye, here it is ! stuck close beside the bank, 
 Beneath the bunch of grass, that spindles rank 
 Its husk-seeds tall and high : 'tis rudely planned 
 Of bleached stubbles, and the withered fare 
 That last year's harvest left upon the land, 
 Lined thinly with the horse's sable hair. 
 Five eggs, $en scribbled o'er with ink their shells, 
 Resembling writing-scrolls, which Fancy reads 
 As Nature's poesy and Pastoral spells 
 They are the Yellow-hammer's, and she dwells, 
 Most poet-like, 'mid brooks and flowery weeds."
 
 Familiar Birds. 129 
 
 CHAFFINCH. 
 
 SHILFA. SCOBBY. SHELLY. SKELLY. SHELL-APPLE. 
 
 CHAFFY. BOLDIE. TWIXK. SPINK. PINK. FINK. 
 
 BEECH, AND HOUSE-DUNG FINCH. 
 
 FIGURE 42. 
 
 jjERE again -we have a long army of names, 
 some of them sounding very like terms of 
 endearment, for which they were, no doubt, 
 intended ; some of reproach ; several of them have re- 
 ference to the various call-notes which the bird utters, 
 one of these being a shrill jink, Jink ! another a more 
 low and somewhat lingering treef. treef. Shilfa is a 
 term more used in Scotland than elsewhere ; and other 
 of the names are employed only in certain localities. 
 Naturalists call the Chaffinch Fringitta c&lebs, meaning 
 a Finch that is a bachelor, because they say, that during 
 a part of the year the male birds leave the hens, and 
 live altogether apart from them. This bird is not natu- 
 rally a brilliant songster, although it is a very sweet 
 one ; yet by a careful system of training it may be made 
 almost to rival the Canary, and others of the best 
 feathered musicians of the cage and aviary. In Ger- 
 many, whence we get the greater part of our well- 
 trained song birds, there are regular schools where 
 Chaffinches are systematically taught. 
 
 The Chaffinch is in every way a neat and handsome 
 bird, well dressed, and well proportioned a very pink 
 
 9
 
 130 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 of a bird ; this, perhaps, is the reason why he is some- 
 times called a Pink ; and, like most of the Finches, he 
 is, too, a very neat builder. A Chaffinch's nest, built 
 under favorable circumstances, is a perfect model of 
 what a bird's nest should be, round and compact, and 
 closely woven, without any loose, ragged material stick- 
 ing about it, to spoil the uniformity of the clear outline. 
 It is generally composed of moss, interspersed with 
 various coloured lichens, so as best to accord in colour 
 with the situation in which it is placed; sometimes 
 grasses, stalks of plants, and small roots are used ; 
 sometimes the lining is wool ; at others, hair or fea- 
 thers, thistle-down or spiders' webs, or, in short, any 
 suitable substance which comes readily to hand, or 
 claw and beak, as we should rather say. But whatever 
 the material may be, the little architect is sure to work 
 it in neatly, and make a good job of it. The situations 
 chosen for building are as various as the materials ; 
 sometimes the nest is fixed in a bush or a hedge-row, 
 or between the branches of a fruit-tree, especially one 
 which is trained up a wall, between which and the tree 
 the nest is generally placed. 
 
 A correspondent of ' The Field Naturalist's Maga- 
 zine' relates that a pair of Chaffinches built in a shrub 
 so close to the window of his sitting-room, that he 
 could observe their operations. The foundation of the 
 nest was laid on the 12th of April; the female only 
 worked at it, and by great diligence the beautiful 
 structure was finished in three weeks. The first egg 
 was deposited on the 2nd of May; four others were 
 afterwards added, and the whole five were hatched on
 
 Familiar Birds- 131 
 
 the 15th. During the time of sitting the male often 
 visited his partner, but it was not observed that he 
 brought her food ; she sat steadily and patiently, quite 
 undisturbed, as it appeared, by the constant observation 
 to which she was subjected from the open window. 
 
 A gentleman who Avrites to the editor of the ' Zoolo- 
 gist,' says, " One of the oldest circumstances that I can 
 recollect about birds is, that a pair of Chaffinches 
 annually built their nest in an old pear tree, and placed 
 it upon a branch, overhanging a walk, so low, that it 
 was often struck by the heads of passengers ;" and this 
 reminds us that the Shell-apple, as the bird is called 
 from this circumstance, is very fond of picking to pieces 
 the buds of the pear and apple trees, no doubt like the 
 Tomtit, for the sake of the insects which he finds 
 therein. The Chaffinch's eggs are in shape a well- 
 formed oval, nine twelfths of an inch long, by six 
 broad; the colour is usually a dull bluish green, 
 clouded with dusky red, the two tints sometimes run- 
 ning into each other. 
 
 Grahame gives us a pretty picture of this bird in its 
 woodland retreat, which we are tempted to set before 
 our readers. 
 
 " At such a still and sultry hour as this, 
 When not a strain is heard through all the woods, 
 I've seen the SHILFA light from off his perch, 
 And hop into a shallow of the stream, 
 Then, half afraid, flit to the shore, then in 
 Again alight, and dip his rosy breast 
 And fluttering wings, while dew-like globules coursed 
 The plumage of his brown-empurpled back. 
 The barefoot boy, who, on some slaty stone, 
 Almost too hot for touch, has watching stood,
 
 132 Nests and Egys of 
 
 Now thinks the well-drenched prize his own, 
 
 And rushes forward ; quick, though wet, the wing 
 
 Gains the first branches of some neighbouring tree, 
 
 And baulks the upward gazing hopeless eye. 
 
 The ruffling plumes are shook, the pens are trimmed, 
 
 And full and clear the sprightly ditty rings, 
 
 Cheering the brooding dam : she sits concealed 
 
 Within the nest deep hollowed, well disguised 
 
 With lichens grey, and mosses gradual blent, 
 
 As if it were a knurle in the bough." 
 
 SPARROW. 
 
 COMMON, HOUSE, OR DOMESTIC SPARROW. 
 FIGURE 43. 
 
 jHIS very commonest of common birds must be 
 well known to all our readers. A bold fami- 
 liar bird, he hops about our path, both in 
 summer and winter, and takes, without waiting for an 
 invitation, a share of whatever he finds eatable. We 
 cannot feed our pigs, or our fowls, or our pigeons, but 
 we feed the Sparrows also, and their chirpings are 
 never out of our ears ; neither should the thought be 
 out of our minds that He who, as the Scripture tells 
 us, feeds the Ravens, and suffers not a Sparrow to fall 
 to the ground unnoticed, is ever near to mark our
 
 Familiar Birds. 133 
 
 doings, and to punish or reward us according to our 
 deserts. 
 
 Every idle nest-pilferer knows the colour of the 
 Sparrow's eggs, and where they may be found ; but as we 
 trust that we are not addressing such, we think it well to 
 give some slight description of them. The colour of the 
 eggs generally is a dull light grey, much spotted and 
 streaked all over with ash colour and dusky brown; 
 these markings vary greatly in different eggs, but a 
 general resemblance may be traced ; ten twelfths of an 
 inch long by seven twelfths broad is the average size. 
 The nest is rather bulky, composed of straw, grass, 
 leaves, twigs, and the like, with a lining of hair, wool, 
 or feathers ; it is not very neatly put together, and is 
 placed in some elevated position, in any convenient 
 cavity, such as a hole or crevice in a wall, an orifice in 
 an old water-pipe, a space beneath the eaves of tiles or 
 thatch. Five or six is the usual number of eggs, and 
 three broods are often reared in one season. Were not 
 the Sparrow so prolific a bird, one would think that it 
 would long since have become extinct, for constant war 
 is waged against it, and truly a price is set upon its 
 head, under the impression, as we think a mistaken one, 
 that it is a most mischievous bird to the husbandman and 
 the gardener. That sparrows consume a considerable 
 quantity of grain and seeds, and do some injury to the 
 fruit, we do not mean to deny ; but there is plenty of 
 evidence to prove that they also destroy an immense 
 number of destructive insects, sufficient, at least, to 
 balance the account which man has against them, if not 
 to make him considerably their debtor.
 
 134 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 This question has been repeatedly argued ; and, among 
 others, Mr. Hawley, of Doncaster, has taken up the 
 cudgels in defence of our persecuted chirper of the house- 
 top. In the ' Zoologist' he thus states the case : " I 
 have watched pairs of Sparrows repeatedly feeding 
 their young, and have found that they bring food to 
 their nest once in ten minutes during at least six hours 
 of the twenty-four, and that each time from two to six 
 caterpillars are brought. Now, suppose that the ' three 
 thousand five hundred Sparrows ' destroyed by ' The 
 Association for killing Sparrows ' were to have been 
 alive the next spring, each pair to have built a nest, and 
 reared successive broods of young, during three months, 
 we have, at the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand 
 per day, the enormous multitude of twenty-one millions 
 and sixty-eight thousand larvae prevented from destroy- 
 ing the products of the land, and from increasing their 
 number from fifty to five hundred fold." 
 
 It seems, then, after all, that the sadly maligned 
 Sparrow is a bird more sinned against than sinning. 
 Many very curious anecdotes, illustrative of the sagacity 
 and other remarkable qualities of the Sparrow, are re- 
 lated by naturalists, and especially in Mr. Morris's 
 ' History of British Birds ' do we find such results of a 
 close observation of the habits and manners of the 
 Fringilla or Passer domestica given at great length. 
 
 "Who killed Cock Robin? 
 ' I,' said the Sparrow, 
 * With my bow and arrow, 
 And I killed Cock Robin.'" 
 
 This is a stigma upon the character of our feathered
 
 Familiar Birds. 135 
 
 friend which ought to be removed. Putting out of 
 sight the absurdity of supposing him capable of using a 
 bow at all, we may remark that Cock Robin is a much 
 more fierce and quarrelsome bird, and, to say the least, 
 as likely to kill, as be killed by, the Sparrow, which is 
 a spirited bird too, when there is occasion for the display 
 of valour. 
 
 Among the curious places chosen by the Sparrow to 
 build, we may mention the lion's mouth over Northum- 
 berland House, at Charing Cross, London ; but London 
 Sparrows are such desperately impudent birds ; they 
 seem to care for nothing. Amid the carved foliage of 
 the stately Corinthian column, or behind the projec- 
 tions of the fretted frieze- work of the royal palace, even, 
 do these dingy denizens of the smoky city make their 
 habitation, and chirp away as noisily as in the straw- 
 built thatch. Beneath the roof that covers " the collec- 
 tive wisdom of the nation," as the English Parliament 
 is called, or above the grand doorway of that noble old 
 Abbey of Westminster, close by, there are the Sparrows 
 chittering and chattering, and quarrelling about the 
 possession of an angel's wing or a grim demoniacal face 
 for a roosting- place.
 
 136 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GREENFINCH. 
 
 GREEN LINNET. GREEN GROSBEAK. 
 FIGURE 44. 
 
 \ItINGILLA, or Coccothraustes chloris is the 
 scientific name of this bird ; the first term 
 meaning a Finch ; the second being derived 
 from coccos, a berry, and thraud, to break ; and the last 
 signifying light green, properly the colour of young 
 grass in allusion to the prevailing tint of the plumage 
 of the bird, which, like all the Finches, is handsome 
 and stoutly built. It is by no means uncommon in this 
 country, where it continues all the year round, collect- 
 ing into flocks in the winter, and resorting to the farm- 
 yards for the sake of the grain stored there. 
 
 The Greenfinches generally begin to build in April : 
 a completed nest has been found as early as March 26th. 
 Small roots, twigs, moss, and straws form the outer 
 materials, and the same of finer texture, with thistle- 
 down, feathers, and hair, the inner. The building-sites 
 selected are various sometimes it is a low bush, or an 
 evergreen ; sometimes the ivy against a wall ; and not 
 unfrequently the forked branches of a fruit tree, whose 
 buds are sure to undergo a careful examination for 
 spiders lurking within. The eggs, from four to seven 
 in number, are of a bluish or reddish white, spotted 
 with purple, grey, and dark brown ; some are much 
 toore covered with markings than others ; they are
 
 Familiar Birds. 137 
 
 nearly eleven twelfths of an inch long, and about eight 
 broad, and taper considerably at one end. According 
 to Neville Wood, this bird pays remarkable attention 
 to its young, and if they are taken, flutters about the 
 hand of the person who does the mischief, and strives 
 to prevent it. One of its favourite nesting places, if 
 Bishop Mant is correct, is a pine tree : he says, 
 
 " A cradle for the Greeubird's bed, 
 And bowery covert o'er her head, 
 A forked pine supplies."
 
 138 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GOLDFINCH. 
 
 THISTLE FINCH. GOLDSPINK. GOLDIE. KING HARRY. 
 RED-CAP. PROUD-TAIL. 
 
 FIGURE 45. 
 
 \ARDUELIS elegans is the scientific name of 
 this most beautiful and musical of Finches ; 
 from carduus, a thistle, of the downy seeds of 
 which the bird is very fond ; the meaning of the second, 
 or specific name, we need hardly explain, its resem- 
 blance to an English word most applicable to the 
 Goldfinch, rendering it sufficiently plain. Master 
 Goldie is, in truth, an elegant fellow, alike in shape 
 and dress ; arid he seems to know it, too. King 
 Harry himself bore not his honours with a prouder air ; 
 his are royal robes, and right royally does he wear 
 them ; and yet he is a sprightly bird, and very affable, 
 as greatness should be, and therefore he is a universal 
 favourite ; loved and admired by all, whether he be 
 caged or free. Would you see him in his glory, go out 
 on a bright autumnal day, to some waste ground, where 
 thistles are plentiful; there he is, flying from clump to 
 clump, clinging to the prickly stems, picking out the 
 downy seeds, and feasting to his heart's content, and 
 twittering his lively notes to express his satisfaction. 
 How the gold of his throat and wings gleams in the 
 sunshine, finely relieved by the glossly black of the top 
 of the head, and neck, tail, and upper and lower parts
 
 Familiar Birds. 139 
 
 of the wings ; the pale brown of the back shines like 
 satin, and the intense crimson above and beneath the 
 eyes glows like a ruby. How sprightly are all the 
 motions of the bird, and how graceful ! Who that 
 could see it thus, in the full enjoyment of liberty, would 
 like to have it shut up in a close cage ? let the bars be 
 ever so bright with gilding, they are but prison bars to 
 him. He may be very cheerful, and perform a number 
 of amusing tricks, such as drawing up water and seed 
 in his tiny bucket. He may sing till he makes the 
 place of his confinement echo again, for sing he must, 
 whether in freedom or captivity. But only give him a 
 chance of escape, and see how gladly he will fly away 
 to the green woods and the flowery meadows. 
 
 Did my readers ever hear what Geoffrey Chaucer, 
 who has been called the father of English poetry, said 
 upon this subject ? Hear his lines 
 
 " Take any bird, and put it in a cage, 
 And do thy best and utmost to engage 
 The bird to love it ; give it meat and drink, 
 And every dainty housewife can bethink ; 
 And keep the cage as cleanly as you may, 
 And let it be with gilt never so gay ; 
 Yet had this bird by twenty thousand fold, 
 Rather be in a forest wild and cold, 
 And feed on worms and such like wretchedness : 
 Yea, ever will he tax his whole address, 
 To get out of the cage when best he may, 
 His liberty the bird desireth aye." 
 
 Macgillivray calls this bird the Red-fronted Thistle- 
 finch, and in France it is termed Chardonneret, from 
 char don, a thistle. It feeds principally upon seeds of 
 what is called the composite order of plants, most of
 
 140 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 which have a downy substance attached to them, like 
 those of the plant above named and the groundsel. In 
 spring the Goldie or Goldspink, as the Scotch call 
 him, picks the seeds out of the fir-cones, and feasts 
 upon them. He begins to sing his sweet and varied 
 song about the end of March, and continues it for four 
 months or so. The nest of the bird, which Bolton says 
 is completed in three days, although it is very neatly 
 and carefully finished, is composed externally of grass, 
 small twigs and roots, moss, and lichens ; internally of 
 wool and hair, the down of the willow and other plants, 
 and sometimes a few leaves or feathers, all closely inter- 
 woven. The eggs, four or five in number, are bluish 
 white or light grey, slightly spotted and occasionally 
 streaked with greyish purple and brown ; they are nine 
 twelfths of an inch long, by six and a half broad. 
 Two broods are usually reared in the year. Grahame 
 shall tell us where the nest is usually placed. 
 
 " With equal art externally disguised, 
 But of internal structure passing far 
 The feathered concaves of the other tribes, 
 The GOLDFINCH weaves, with willow down inlaid, 
 And cannach tufts, his wonderful abode. 
 Sometimes, suspended at the limber end 
 Of plane-tree spray, among the broad-leaved shoots 
 The tiny hammock swings to every gale ; 
 Sometimes in closest thickets 'tis conceal'd ; 
 Sometimes in hedge luxuriant, where the brier, 
 The bramble, and the crooked plum-tree branch, 
 Warp through the thorn, surmounted by the flowers 
 Of climbing vetch, and honeysuckle wild, 
 All undefaced by Art's deforming hand. 
 But mark the pretty bird himself! how light 
 And quick his every motion, every note !
 
 Familiar Birds. 141 
 
 How beautiful his plumes ! his red-tinged head; 
 His breast of brown : and see him stretch his wing ; 
 A fairy fan of golden spokes it seems. 
 Oft on the thistle's tuft he, nibbling, sits, 
 Light as the down ; then, 'mid a flight of downs, 
 He wings his way, piping his shrillest call." 
 
 LINNET. 
 
 COMMON, BROWN, GREY, RED-BREASTED, ROSE, OR WHIN 
 LINNET. GREATER REDPOLE. LINTIE. 
 
 FIGURE 46. 
 
 VERY different bird in appearance from the 
 last, is the plain little Brown Linnet, a sober- 
 coloured bird generally, although its plumage 
 changes considerably at different periods, and frequently 
 there is a beautiful rose-coloured flush, diffused, as it 
 Avere, over nearly the whole surface, but especially 
 showing itself on the breast, top of the head, and middle 
 of the back and wings ; it always seems to us as if 
 the gentle bird were blushing at the praises which its 
 fine voice and good qualities call forth. A very sweet 
 songster is the Linnet, and a very pretty interesting 
 bird, although not so showy as most others of the Finch 
 tribe, to which it properly belongs. It possesses great 
 imitative powers, and from its docility may be easily
 
 142 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 trained and taught ; it is therefore highly valued as a 
 cage and aviary bird. Its scientific name is Fringilla, 
 or Linaria cannabina, derived, says Morris, from linum t 
 flax ; and canna, a cane or reed. The reason of the 
 first term we can well understand, as the bird feeds 
 much on the flax seed ; but we are at a loss to account 
 for the second, as there seems no sort of natural con- 
 nection between the habits or food of the bird, and the 
 aquatic plants from which the specific name is said to 
 come. 
 
 The favourite haunts of the Linnet, which is a per- 
 manent resident in this country, are the wild hilly 
 tracts, where the gorse, or whin, the broom and the 
 heather, grow abundantly, as well as the plants upon 
 whose seeds they chiefly feed: there they find both 
 food and shelter, and are seldom disturbed by the pre- 
 sence of man. In the winter, however, they assemble 
 in flocks, and betake them to the cultivated grounds, 
 where they are destroyed in large numbers, being 
 snared or shot, like the Finches and Larks, for the sake 
 of their flesh. 
 
 Small twigs and stalks of grass, intermixed with 
 moss and wool, and lined with feathers and hair, com- 
 pose the nest of the Lintie, or Lintwhite, as this bird 
 is called in Scotland, where it is perhaps more plenti- 
 ful than in the southern parts of the island. It is a 
 neat structure, and is commonly placed on one of the 
 low shrubs or bushes which grow upon the moor and 
 mountain side ; sometimes it may be found among the 
 tall grass or heather ; and sometimes, though rarely, in 
 a tree, ten or twelve feet from the ground. The eggs
 
 Familiar Birds. 143 
 
 usually number from four to six ; they measure about 
 nine twelfths of an inch long, by six and a half broad; 
 the colour is usually a bluish white, spotted most 
 thickly at the larger end with purplish grey and red- 
 dish brown. Some have been found of a dull dark red 
 colour, without spots, and some of a pure white. 
 
 The poet Darwin will furnish us with a few lines 
 descriptive of the nest of the bird. 
 
 " The busy birds with nice selection cull 
 Soft thistle-down, grey moss, and scatter'd wool ; 
 Far from each prying eye the nest prepare, 
 Form'd of warm moss, and lined with softest hair. 
 Week after week, regardless of her food, 
 The incumbent Linnet warms her future brood ; 
 Each spotted egg with ivory bill she turns, 
 Day after day with fond impatience burns ; 
 Hears the young prisoner chirping in his cell. 
 And breaks in hemispheres the fragile shell." 

 
 144 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 LESSER REDPOLE. 
 
 LITTLE REDPOLB LINNET. 
 TIGURE 47. 
 
 !HIS is a much smaller bird than the common 
 Linnet, to which, in many respects, it bears a 
 close resemblance. Naturalists call it Fringilla 
 linaria, or Linaria minor, that is, the Flax Finch, or 
 the Lesser Flax-bird. In the north of England, Ireland, 
 and Scotland, it resides throughout the year, but only 
 appears in the south during the autumn and winter, 
 except occasionally and rarely. It is a pretty lively bird, 
 very nimble and active, like the Titmouse, assuming a 
 great variety of curious attitudes, when hunting for food, 
 among the birch and alder trees, which it chiefly fre- 
 quents. The great American naturalist says that few 
 birds display a more affectionate disposition than this, 
 and tells us how pleased he was to see several on a 
 twig, feeding each other by passing a seed from bill to 
 bill. They breed chiefly in the hilly districts, like the 
 Linnet, and build their nests in a low bush or tree, or 
 among the heather on the ground; it is formed of moss, 
 grass, stems, and willow catkins, the last, and also 
 feathers, being used for the lining. The eggs, four or 
 five in number, are of a pale bluish-green colour, 
 spotted with brown. The young are hatched late, and
 
 Familiar Birds. 145 
 
 are seldom ready to fly before the end of June, or 
 beginning of July. 
 
 The following lines by Grahame will apply as well 
 to this as to the last species. 
 
 " When whinny braes are garlanded with gold, 
 And, blythe, the lamb pursues, in merry chase, 
 His twin around the bush ; the Linnet, then, 
 With the prickly fortress builds her bower, 
 And warmly lines it round, with hair and wool 
 Inwove. Sweet minstrel, may'st thou long delight 
 The whinny know, and broomy brae, and bank 
 Of fragrant birch ! May never fowler's snare 
 Tangle thy struggling foot !" 
 
 10
 
 146 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 BULLFINCH. 
 
 COAL-HOOD. RED-HOOP. TINY-HOOP. ALP. POPE. 
 NOPE. 
 
 FIGURE 48. 
 
 jjHIS is rather a handsome than an elegant bird ; 
 the shape is somewhat clumsy, but the plumage 
 exceedingly rich and striking. We need not 
 describe it, as all our readers must have seen the large- 
 bodied, red-breasted, and black-hooded Finch, called by 
 naturalists Loxia pyrrhula or Pyrrhula vulgaris, the 
 first term signifying oblique or transverse, from the 
 shape of the bill ; the second, a bird with red plumage, 
 from pyrros, red; and the third, vulgaris, common. 
 
 The Bullfinch is more especially a bird of the green- 
 wood ; it is not much found in either very barren or 
 very highly-cultivated districts, although its retreats 
 are not generally far from the latter. It delights to 
 dwell amid the chequered shade of interlacing boughs, 
 whence it can sally out to some near-at-hand orchard 
 or garden, to feast upon the ripe fruit, or the blossom- 
 buds of various trees, such as the apple, pear, cherry, 
 medlar, gooseberry, or the plum. Mr. Morris con- 
 jectures that the common name of this bird is a cor- 
 ruption of Budfinch, or Boodfinch, as it is pronounced 
 in the north. Besides fruit, this Finch feeds on the
 
 Familiar Birds. 147 
 
 seeds and leaves of groundsel and other weeds, hips and 
 haws, and various kinds of berries. 
 
 The natural song of the Bullfinch is a short, SAveet, 
 plaintive, piping, while giving utterance to which it 
 generally flirts up the tail in a very curious manner. 
 Probably, says Morris, its vernacular, that is, common, 
 names Nope, Hoop, Pope, are derived from its resem- 
 blance to these sounds. In spring, while the hen is 
 sitting on her nest, the male bird will pour out for 
 hours together, a low and broken warble, as it would 
 seem, to cheer and enliven her labours, and, while 
 doing so, he keeps puffing out his feathers, and wrig- 
 gling his head about in a most extraordinary manner, 
 no doubt to show his affection. The Bullfinch is a very 
 teachable bird ; he learns to pipe and whistle tunes^ 
 and even to articulate words. Some of the birds so 
 taught fetch high prices ; they are chiefly brought from 
 Germany. 
 
 Our Bully generally commences housekeeping at the 
 beginning of May ; he chooses, perhaps, a fir-tree, per- 
 haps a hawthorn, or some other thick bush, " and there 
 he makes his home," at a height, generally, of not less 
 than four or five feet from the ground. He is not so 
 neat a builder as are nearly all the other members of 
 his family ; the materials he uses are twigs, fine roots, 
 and moss. The eggs, four or five in number, are of a 
 pale blue, speckled and streaked with purplish-grey and 
 reddish-brown j they are nine and a half twelfths of an 
 inch long by seven and a half broad. Bullfinches fre- 
 quently build in shrubberies and gardens. A gentleman 
 residing at Frickley Hall, near Doncaster, relates that
 
 148 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 a hen bird of this species, which was sitting in a laurel 
 near the house, suffered herself to be touched, and 
 would feed from the hand without any manifestation of 
 fear. 
 
 Numerous other anecdotes might be related to show 
 how gentle and docile a bird this is, but we must now 
 bring our agreeable task to a conclusion. 

 
 4t> 
 
 "', S' 
 
 I 
 
 : . 
 
 
 t^vj^* r ^^ r 
 
 Sgsj^i^" 
 
 ^KS*^-
 
 Familiar Birds. 149 
 
 CROSSBILL. 
 
 EUROPEAN OR COMMON CROSSBILL. SHELL OR SHIELD- 
 APPLE. 
 
 FIGURE 49. 
 
 |F those curious birds called Crossbills, from the 
 peculiar construction of the bills, the points 
 of which cross each other, there are three 
 species known in this country, but two of them, namely, 
 the Parrot and White-winged Crossbills, are very rare, 
 only a few specimens having been taken here. The 
 more common kind is a migratory bird, coming in large 
 flocks at very irregular intervals, and visiting more 
 especially those parts of the country where there are 
 woods and plantations of fir and pine, of the seeds of 
 which they are very fond, extracting them with great 
 dexterity from between the scales of the cones ; for 
 this operation, the projecting points of the bill appear 
 to be well adapted, as well as for picking out the apple- 
 pips, as they are called, and kernels of other fruits ; 
 hence the name shell-apple given to the bird, which 
 was a not uncommon visitor to the English orchards in 
 former times ; thus in a curious old record we are told 
 that " In the yeere 1593, was a greate and exceeding 
 yeere of apples ; and there were greate plenty of strang 
 birds, that shewed themselves at the tyme the apples 
 were full rype, who fedd uppon the kernells onely oi
 
 150 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 those apples, and haveing a bill with one beake wry- 
 thinge over the other, which would presently bore a 
 greate hole in the apple, and make way to the kernells ; 
 they were of the bignesse of a bullfinch, the henne 
 right like the henne of the bullfinch in coulour ; the 
 cocke a very glorious bird, in a manner al redde or 
 yellowe on the brest, backe, and head." 
 
 We would not advise our young readers to take the 
 above as a lesson in spelling, although it is a very 
 lively and faithful picture of the Crossbill, great flocks 
 of which were English visitants in 1254, 1593, and 
 1791, when a bird-catcher in Bath caught one hundred 
 pairs, which he sold for five shillings each ; again, in 
 1806, 1828 and 9, and 1835; ever since which time 
 they have generally remained with us in greater or 
 lesser numbers, having been probably induced to do so 
 by the greater abundance of fir plantations. They are 
 very lively birds, chattering and making a shrill noise 
 while engaged in their favourite occupation of picking 
 out seeds ; they swing about on the branches of the 
 trees often head downwards, and are very nimble and 
 graceful in their movements, and so fearless of the 
 approach of man, that they can frequently be taken 
 with a hand-net, or knocked down with a stick. 
 
 That the Crossbill sometimes breeds in this country 
 there cannot be a doubt, but it does this only as an ex- 
 ception to the general rule ; the nest, which has been 
 found at various seasons, has been described as of a 
 loose texture, not unlike that of the Common Green- 
 finch, though not nearly so well nor so carefully built ; 
 the eggs also are not unlike those of that bird but
 
 Familiar Birds. 151 
 
 larger. In Norway and Sweden, where the bird habi- 
 tually breeds, the nest is built in the uppermost branches 
 of the pines and firs ; it is composed of grass, moss, 
 and the finer portion of these trees : one has been 
 found here on an apple tree, and another on a fir, and 
 another, near Dartford, in Kent, on the lowest fork of 
 a pine ; this was composed of dry twigs, but no eggs 
 were laid in it, the curiosity of frequent observers 
 having driven the bird away. 
 
 Although we have placed this among our familiar 
 Birds, the eggs to English collectors are rare and 
 difficult of attainment, and should be prized accord- 
 ingly. The scientific name given to the species is 
 Loxia curvirostra, both the terms having reference to 
 the shape of the beak, the first coming from the Greek 
 loxos, curved, and the latter from the Latin curvus, 
 curved or bent, and rostra, the beak. By some natu- 
 ralists Europcea is the generic term, and this so closely 
 resembles the English name as to require no expla- 
 nation.
 
 152 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 STARLING. 
 
 COMMON STARLING, OR STARE. 
 FIGURE 50. 
 
 fiHIS handsome and well-known bird is some- 
 times called, when young, the Solitary 
 Thrush. Its scientific name is Sturnus 
 vulgaris, which is simply the Latin for the Common 
 Starling. It may be met with in all parts of Britain, 
 even in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, where it some- 
 times breeds in rocky caves, and fissures, and holes in 
 the turf. More towards the south its nest is found in 
 hollow trees, cavities in chalk-pits, sandy banks and 
 old buildings ; it is large and rudely fashioned of straw, 
 roots, dry grass, and other vegetable fibres, with fre- 
 quently a lining of hair and feathers ; the eggs, from 
 four to six in number, are of a delicate greenish blue 
 colour, sometimes altogether plain, but frequently 
 spotted with black ; they are of a longish oval shape. 
 
 " Nidification," as Mr. Morris tells us, in his 
 beautiful work on British Birds, " commences about 
 the beginning or middle of April." This word, my 
 readers should remember, comes from the Latin nidus, 
 a nest. 
 
 Incubation lasts about sixteen days ; mcubatio, as we 
 have already explained, is the Latin for to lie or sit 
 tipon. These are words we shall often have to use,
 
 f-1^ * 
 
 c
 
 Familiar Birds. 153 
 
 and therefore we think it well to explain their meaning 
 here, lest they should have escaped the memory of some 
 who take this volume in hand. 
 
 The Starling is gregarious and insectivorous, that is, 
 it goes in flocks and feeds on insects ; chiefly on insects, 
 we should say, hut not altogether, for it likes also 
 worms, snails, grain, fruit, and seeds of various kinds, 
 so that it may be almost called omnivorous, eating all 
 things. A bold lively bird, something like the Magpie 
 in its habits, given to picking and stealing when it can 
 get a chance ; it is, nevertheless, a general favourite, on 
 account of its beauty and teachability, if we may use 
 such a word. It has naturally a low musical note, 
 which is uttered by both male and female, although least 
 by the latter, and may be taught to articulate many 
 words, so that it is often kept in confinement, where, 
 like the poor bird in Sterne's ' Sentimental Journey,' 
 we may fancy we hear it exclaiming in piteous tones, 
 " I can't get out ! "
 
 154 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 CHOUGH. 
 
 CORNISH CHOUGH. RED-LEGGED, MARKET-JEW, OR 
 HERMIT-CROW. RED-LEGGED JACKDAW. GESNER's 
 WOOD-CROW. CORNISH, CHAUK, OR CLIFF-DAW. 
 CORNWALL KAE, OR KILLEGREW. 
 
 FIGURE 51. 
 
 jjLENT Y of names here for one bird. Oh, stay, 
 here's another Long-billed Chough : not to 
 count the scientific names, the most common 
 of which is Corvus graculus, that is, a Chough Crow, 
 whichever may be preferred. Some naturalists use a 
 longer specific name, and say Pyrrhocorax, which comes 
 from the Greek pyrrhos, red, and Corax, a Crow. A 
 fine handsome fellow is this, with his sable plumes, 
 over which shimmers a steely blue reflection ; his bright 
 eye, and long red bill, and legs of the same colour ; the 
 very handsomest of the Crow family, and with us the 
 rarest, although, from all that we can read and learn, it 
 was formerly by no means uncommon, especially in 
 Cornwall, as its name imports. It now occasionally 
 occurs in small flocks in various parts of Great Britain, 
 generally near the coast, where it builds amid the cliffs 
 a rude nest of sticks lined with wool and hair ; the eggs 
 are generally five in number, of a dull white colour, 
 spotted with grey and light brown, mostly thick at the 
 larger end. Sometimes the nest is found in old church
 
 Familiar Birds, 155 
 
 or other towers, especially such as are in a ruinous 
 condition. 
 
 The Chough feeds chiefly on grasshoppers, beetles, 
 and other insects, in search of which, says Mr. Morris, 
 it will follow the plough like the Rooks ; it will also 
 eat the smaller kinds of Crustacea, or shell-fish, and 
 grain and berries. Now and then it indulges, like the 
 Common Crow, in a feast of carrion. It has a shrill 
 note, something like that of the Jackdaw; it also 
 chatters, and steals, and talks, as well as a Starling, in 
 short is a most accomplished feathered performer. One 
 of its favourite haunts is, or used to be, Shakspere's 
 cliff at Dover, and our great poet, describing that grand 
 and sublime scene, alludes to the bird. 
 
 " Here's the place : stand still. How fearful 
 And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low ! 
 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, 
 Show scarce so large as heetles."
 
 156 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 RAVEN. 
 
 CORBIE. CORBIE CROW. GREAT CORBIE CROW. 
 FIGURE 52. 
 
 jjCIENTIFIC name, Corvus corax, the first being 
 the Latin, and the second Greek, for a Crow. 
 This is the largest, as it is also one of the best 
 known of the Crow tribe or family. It is found in 
 nearly all parts of the world in the coldest as well 
 as the hottest climates amid the wild mountainous 
 regions of everlasting snow, in the depths of the 
 gloomiest forests, and on the wide prairies and sandy 
 plains, its hoarse cry may be heard ; as well as on the 
 lonely island, whose shores are lashed by the foaming 
 waves of the mighty ocean, and seldom or ever visited 
 by the prow of the merchant or other vessel. 
 
 A bold familiar bird is the Raven, with jet black 
 plumes, and a large powerful bill, fitted for tearing to 
 pieces the flesh of animals on which it often feeds ; 
 and a deep hollow voice, that grates harshly upon the 
 ear ; and strong feet armed with sharp talons ; and 
 wings that spread out to a great extent, and with 
 regular and well-timed beats, flap , flap , flap , winnow 
 the air, and support the bird in its long flight over land 
 and sea ; while the broad tail, now elevated and now 
 depressed, now turned this way and now that, gives to 
 the heavy body the desired direction. " Croak ! " one
 
 Familiar Birds. 157 
 
 hears the sound, and scarcely knows whether it comes 
 from the air above or the earth beneath ; but presently 
 the sunshine is obscured by a black shadow, and swoop! 
 down comes the bird of ill omen, as people have gene- 
 rally agreed to consider it, down upon the sick sheep, 
 or any other weak and defenceless creature, that may 
 be within the compass of its keen sight, and commences 
 picking out the eyes of the animal, reminding us of 
 the punishment threatened by the Lord against dis- 
 obedient children, as mentioned in Proverbs, and para- 
 phrased in Dr. Watts' familiar lines : 
 
 " Have you not heard what dreadful plagues 
 
 Are threatened by the Lord, 
 To him that breaks his father's law, 
 
 Or mocks his mother's word, 
 What heavy guilt upon him lies, 
 
 How cursed is his name, 
 The Ravens shall pick out his eyes, 
 
 And Eagles eat the same." 
 
 Then again, as we see the strong- winged bird sweep 
 far away over the wide sea, we think of the time when 
 the waters covered the face of the whole earth, and 
 "Noah sent forth a Raven, which went to and fro 
 until the waters Avere dried up." Or, if in some scene 
 of wild sublimity, some valley hemmed in by lofty 
 mountains, through which a stream goes winding 
 silently, we are startled by that black shadow and 
 harsh grating note, we fancy ourselves by the brook 
 Cherith, where the Ravens brought bread and flesh, 
 morning and evening, to the prophet Elijah, being 
 commanded to do so by God, who, as we are told in
 
 158 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 Job, "provideth for the Raven his food;" and in 
 Psalms, " heareth the young Ravens which cry." 
 
 In nearly all parts of Great Britain these birds are 
 found; they were formerly more abundant than they 
 are at present, gamekeepers and others having long 
 waged war against them, on account of their real or 
 supposed propensity to destroy the young hares, par- 
 tridges, pheasants, etc. 
 
 In the northern and western parts of Scotland, and 
 in some of the Scottish Isles they are numerous. They 
 make large nests composed of sticks, cemented together 
 with mud, and lined with roots, wool, fur, and such 
 other soft materials as come most readily to hand, or 
 we should rather say, to beak and claw ; they are said 
 sometimes to rob the sheep's backs. Their building- 
 places are cliffs and precipices, church towers, caves and 
 rocky fissures, and the clefts between the forked branches 
 of tall trees. The eggs are from four to six in number, 
 of a pale olive green, more or less blotched and spotted 
 Avith greenish brown and grey. They are early builders, 
 sometimes commencing in January ; the eggs, says Mr. 
 Morris, have been taken in the middle of February. 
 Incubation lasts twenty days; both male and female 
 sit on the eggs, in defence of which and their young, 
 they will fight desperately, driving off the hawks, and 
 even eagles and vultures. 
 
 The Raven is known to live to a great age, often, 
 when in a domesticated state, seeing out two or three 
 generations of a family. It is one of those birds which 
 possess the power of imitating the human voice, and 
 many anecdotes are told of its proficiency in this
 
 Familiar Birds. 159 
 
 respect. It is a very sagacious bird, indeed so cunning 
 that it has been thought by ignorant persons to know 
 more than it ought, and to be in league with witches 
 and other " uncanny" people. Constantly do we find 
 its cry alluded to, by both ancient and modern poets, 
 as ominous of death. 
 
 " The Raven is a dreaded bird, 
 The stoutest quail wheu his voice is heard, 
 For when, 'tis said, his dismal cry 
 Rends thrice the tranquil azure sky, 
 
 'Tis the token, 
 
 Surely spoken, 
 That ravenous death is hovering nigh."
 
 160 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 CARRION CROW. 
 
 GOR, GORE, OR FLESH CROW. BLACK NEB. HOODY BRAN. 
 FIGURE 53. 
 
 EVERYBODY knows the common Crow that 
 goes caw-cawing over the fields through the 
 long summer day, and hunts in the freshly- 
 turned furrows for grubs and wire-worms, and settles 
 down upon the marshes where the white flocks are 
 feeding, dotting them here and there with great black 
 spots, as though some literary giant had taken too 
 much ink in his pen, and scattered it out over the 
 landscape before he began to write. Oh yes, everybody 
 knows the familiar Crow, called by scientific people 
 Corvus corone, Latin and Greek again for the same 
 thing a Crow ! Black and all black is he, a kind of 
 Raven in miniature, closely resembling that bird in his 
 habits as well as appearance. A foul feeder, delighting 
 in putrid carcasses, and all kinds of meat that is not 
 merely a " little touched," but " very far gone" indeed. 
 The shepherd does not like him, neither does the 
 gamekeeper, neither does the farmer, although we are 
 inclined to think that the dislike of the latter is owing 
 to an unfounded prejudice ; true it is that our friend 
 Corvus does sometimes eat grain, but he prefers animal 
 food, and oftener feeds on worms and other grain- 
 destroyers. If you wish to find his nest, you must 
 climb into the tall elm tree, or far up the face of the 
 chalky cliff; it is made of sticks, cemented together
 
 Familiar Birds. 161 
 
 with clay, and lined with roots, straw, wool, moss, or 
 any soft substance which can be had. If in a tree, it is 
 usually placed among the topmost branches, or else on 
 a bough near to the trunk, so as to be well sheltered 
 and hidden from view. The eggs, from four to six in 
 number, are of a pale bluish green or grey, speckled, 
 some very thickly, with light brown and deep grey. 
 
 The Crows, like the Ravens, pair for life ; the work 
 of building is shared by both birds, and generally com- 
 mences about the end of February or beginning of 
 March. There is a variety of this species which is 
 almost wholly white, and this is the case also with the 
 Raven. Harrison Ainsworth has written a spirited 
 song on the Carrion Crow, of which this is the first 
 verse : 
 
 " The Carriou Crow is a sexton bold, 
 He raketh the dead from out the mould; 
 He delveth the ground like a miser old 
 Stealthily hiding his store of gold. 
 Caw ! Caw ! 
 
 The Carrion Crow hath a coat of black, 
 Silky and sleek, like a priest's, on his back ; 
 Like a lawyer he grubbeth, no matter what way, 
 The fonler the offal, the richer the prey. 
 
 Caw ! Caw ! the Carrion Crow ! 
 Dig .' Dig ! in the ground below ! 
 
 11
 
 162 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 HOODED CROW. 
 
 ROYSTON. GREY. GREY-BACKED, DUN, BUNTING, 
 HEEDY, OR SCARE-CROW. HOODY. 
 
 FIGURE 54. 
 
 HE Hooded Crow, so called, most probably, 011 
 account of the distinct black covering of the 
 head and neck, is not a very common bird in 
 England generally, although it may often be found in 
 certain localities, and at certain seasons, for it is partly 
 migratory, frequenting the southern parts of the island 
 only in winter, usually from October to April. In the 
 north of Scotland, and the Hebrides and other islands, 
 they are always to be found, and in great numbers. In 
 its habits the Hooded Crow resembles the common 
 kind, except that it is more of a coast bird, seldom 
 being found far from the sea-shore, or the banks of 
 estuaries, or tidal rivers. 
 
 Its nest is generally placed on tall trees, or the clefts 
 and chasms of rocks and hill sides. Mr. Morris de- 
 scribes it as composed of sticks, roots, stalks, or hea- 
 ther, lined with wool and hair. The eggs are from 
 four to six in number, of a green tint, mottled over 
 with greenish brown ; some have been found of a yel- 
 lowish tinge, or with dashes and streaks of yellow, 
 others of a uniform dull dark green, with but few spots 
 or variations of any kind. 
 
 It is the opinion of some naturalists that the Hooded
 
 yW^S&^
 
 Familiar Birds. 163 
 
 and Carrion Crows are but varieties of one species, and 
 certain it is that they do sometimes breed together, but 
 there appears to be sufficient distinctive marks and 
 characteristics to warrant the specific difference assumed 
 for them by most of the leading ornithologists. 
 
 Frequenting as it does the sea-shore, the Hooded 
 Crow, which may be known by its distinctly marked 
 plumage of dull grey, extending all over the back, 
 breast, and belly, feeds on shell-fish, which it bears up 
 to a great height, and then lets fall on a large stone or 
 piece of rock, so as to break the shell. We have here 
 an instance of something very like reasoning power, in 
 what we must call an unreasoning creature, nor are 
 such instances at all unfrequent in natural history.
 
 164 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 ROOK. 
 
 BARE-FACED CROW. YDFRUN, OF THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
 FIGURE 55. 
 
 fATURALISTS term this bird Corvus frugi- 
 legus. With the meaning of the first, or 
 generic name, our readers are already well 
 acquainted; the specific name comes from the Latin 
 fruges fruits, and lego, to collect or gather, and from 
 this we learn that it is a frugiverous or fruit-eating 
 bird ; it is not, however, altogether so, for it feeds much 
 on insects, worms, slugs, and such small animals, in 
 search of which it digs or delves with its large and 
 strong beak, all around the base of which is bare of 
 feathers, hence the name Bare-faced Crow, by which 
 the bird is known in some localities. It is a matter of 
 dispute whether or not this bareness is caused by the 
 constant use of the bill as a digging instrument; we 
 are inclined to think not, for several reasons, which 
 need not here be stated ; but, that the bare whitish skin 
 which surrounds the beak, and which offers such a 
 strong contrast to the rest of the purplish black plu- 
 mage, is a natural distinction. 
 
 Rooks are said to be more abundant in England than 
 in any other part of the world, although they are found 
 in most temperate regions of Europe and Asia ; they do
 
 Familiar Birds. 165 
 
 not, like many of the Corvine, or Crow family, increase 
 towards the north, but, on the contrary, decrease in 
 that direction : in the Scottish islands they are not to 
 be met with. They are strictly gregarious birds, im- 
 mense numbers of them building and rearing their 
 young together. Almost every English Village, or 
 Hall, or old Manor House, has, or at one time had, its 
 " Rookery," where, on the tops of the tall elms or other 
 lofty trees, the sable birds delight to build their large 
 loose nests of sticks, cemented together with clay, and 
 lined with grass and root fibres. There do they hold 
 their noisy councils, morning and evening, but espe- 
 cially at the latter time, before retiring to rest. One 
 would think they had all the affairs of the nation to 
 settle, so long and loud is the debate, or at least that 
 there must be an immense deal of quarrelling about the 
 right to this or that resting-place ; and more fighting, 
 too, than there ought to be, among a decent feathered 
 community. 
 
 There is something pleasing about the caw of the 
 Rook, whether heard in the dreamy quietude of nature, 
 or, as it often is, amid the bustle of the busy town ; it 
 is a sociable bird, friendly to man and his belongings. 
 It is an English bird a home bird, and reminds us of 
 domestic scenes and pleasures. We have had rookeries 
 in the very hearts of cities ; there was one in the Tem- 
 ple Gardens, in London, close by the stream of life 
 which ever flows and reflows up and down the Strand 
 and Fleet Street. Not many years since it was stated 
 in the papers that, "in the small churchyard of St. 
 Peter's, Westcheap, situated in Wood Street, Cheap-
 
 166 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 side, stands a solitary tree, in the lofty branches of 
 which two pairs of Rooks have built themselves nests, 
 and are now busily engaged in rearing two broods, 
 which have been recently hatched." But volumes 
 might be written, as they have been, about Rooks and 
 rookeries ; Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb, and Wash- 
 ington Irvington, and nearly all the English poets 
 might be called in to give their tribute of praise to this 
 old familiar friend and companion of our life-journey. 
 
 The Rooks are frugal nest-builders ; they make the 
 same structure do year after year. Early in March 
 they begin to repair their old habitations, which, during 
 the winter, we may see far up amid the naked branches, 
 like so many bundles of dry sticks ; the young pairs, 
 we suppose, build new ones, unless they should find a 
 nest left vacant by the removal, by death or otherwise, 
 of parents or other relatives, for all the community 
 must be closely allied. 
 
 " Where, in venerable rows, 
 Widely waving oaks enclose 
 The moat of yonder antique hall, 
 Swarms the Rooks with clamorous callj 
 And, to the toils of nature true, 
 Wreathe their capacious nests anew," 
 
 says the poet Warton, describing the 1st of April ; and 
 generally by the end of May or beginning of June, the 
 young Rooks are fledged. The eggs from which they 
 have emerged do not differ greatly from those of the 
 other members of the Corvus family just described. 
 They are usually four or five in number, of a pale
 
 Familiar Birds. 
 
 167 
 
 greenish ground colour, blotched and spotted with 
 light brown and yellowish green ; they, however, vary 
 greatly, some being nearly white, others grey, and 
 others olive brown, with markings more or less deep 
 and distinct.
 
 168 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 JACKDAW. 
 
 DAW. KAE. 
 FIGURE 56. 
 
 OR VUS monedula is the scientific name of this 
 species, the latter, or specific title, being 
 derived, as Mr. Morris supposes, from moneo, 
 to warn ; the Daw, like most of the Crow tribe, 
 having been formerly considered a creature of evil 
 augury. 
 
 A pert bold fellow is the Jackdaw, restless, inquisi- 
 tive, and loquacious; ever poking and prying into every 
 hole and corner, and purloining whatever he can lay 
 his claw or his bill on. He seems to delight in mis- 
 chief, and to consider that to pick and steal is the great 
 end and object of his existence. This is a sad charac- 
 ter to give a bird, but we must tell the truth at all 
 hazards, and confess that, notwithstanding the respec- 
 tability of his appearance, with his suit of silky black, 
 and grey poll, like the wig of a counsellor, he is a sad 
 scamp. 
 
 Oh, what a long catalogue of crimes and offences 
 connected with this black-coated offender might we 
 present had we space and inclination to do so ; but we 
 have not, and indeed it is not necessary, for all the 
 world knows the character of the subject of these 
 remarks, as well as Thomas Hood, who says
 
 Familiar Birds. 169 
 
 " The Daw 's not reckoned a religious bird 
 Because it keeps a cawing from a steeple." 
 
 And this brings us to one of the favorite building places 
 of Kae, as the Scotch people call it; ruined towers and 
 ivy-grown steeples, holes in cliffs and hollow trees, are 
 generally chosen for the heap of sticks loosely piled 
 together, and having a depression in the centre, where, 
 on a layer of wool, hair, grass, or other soft substance, 
 the eggs are deposited ; in number from four to six, of 
 a pale bluish white, spotted with greyish brown ; some 
 of the spots being large and distinct, and much deeper 
 than the others. The young birds are generally 
 hatched by the end of May, or early in June, by the 
 end of the second week in which month they are 
 usually fit to be taken from the nest ; they are easily 
 reared by hand, and become very tame, learning to talk, 
 and play all sorts of curious tricks. 
 
 The caw of the Daw is more high and shrill than that 
 of most Crows ; it is found in nearly all parts of Great 
 Britain, and is common in Holland, Germany, France, 
 Italy, and most countries of Europe. One remarkable 
 circumstance connected with its nidification is the 
 immense quantity of material which it collects ; some- 
 times it builds in chimneys, and completely stops them 
 up with the huge pile of sticks which it there deposits. 
 It is said that the fire which some years since partly 
 consumed the cathedral of York was much fed and 
 assisted by Jackdaws' nests on the turrets. In Cam- 
 bridge, where the Daws are numerous, building in the 
 colleges and church towers, no less than eighteen dozen 
 of deal laths, about nine inches long and one broad,
 
 170 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 which had been purloined from the botanic gardens, 
 where they were put into the ground as labels for the 
 plants, were found in the shaft of one chimney in which 
 the birds had built. Many anecdotes are related of the 
 ingenuity they manifest on getting their building ma- 
 terials into the desired position, often through narrow 
 loopholes and up winding staircases they manage to 
 convey long sticks and pieces of wood in a manner truly 
 surprising ; and the way in which they pile up the 
 light fabric upon joists and cross-beams and window- 
 sills, and make it all firm and stable, is no less so, 
 Sometimes the Daws choose less lofty situations for 
 their nests ; generally, as Bishop Mant tells us, they 
 make 
 
 " In spire or looped and windowed tower 
 Of hallowed fane their nestling bovver. 
 In caverned cliff beside the sea, 
 Or hollow of the woodland tree ;" 
 
 but occasionally they descend, when nature 
 
 " Prompts them in the waste to roam 
 And seek a subterranean home, 
 The burrowing rabbit's haunt, and there 
 Of sticks and matted wool prepare 
 Their dwelling, and produce their race, 
 Tn that unlikely dwelling-place."
 
 Familiar Birds. 171 
 
 MAGPIE. 
 
 PIET. PIANET. MAG. MADGE. 
 FIGURE 57. 
 
 1C A CA UDA TA, Pica melanoleuca, and 
 Corvus pica are the several names given by 
 naturalists to this bird ; the first word is Latin, 
 and means simply a pie ; in the same language caudus 
 signifies a tail, and a splendid tail our handsome 
 Magpie possesses, long and broad, and, like the beauti- 
 ful pinions, all shot with green and purple reflections. 
 Melanoleuca is compounded of two Greek words, mean- 
 ing black and white, and no one can deny that this is 
 very appropriate, although it is not so commonly used 
 as the former name. The third title may be translated 
 the Crow-Pie, indicating the particular genus and 
 species of Mag the merry. No member of the Crow 
 family puts on so resplendent a dress as this ; beauti- 
 fully do the snowy shoulders (scapulars, naturalists 
 would say) and belly contrast with the rich velvety 
 black of the back, breast, head, and neck. Rich is the 
 sheen of emerald and amethyst which plays about the 
 tail and wings, as the latter are spread out in the sun- 
 shine, and the former flirts up and down with a quick 
 vibrating motion. And such a droll fellow, too, is Mag ; 
 every now and then you would think he were dancing, 
 or imitating some fine lady or courtly beau ; he steps 
 or hops along in such an odd, fantastic manner. Yes,
 
 172 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 a droll fellow, but a sad thief; it is not safe to leave a 
 gold chain, or a ring, or a silver spoon, in his way ; up 
 into the old church steeple it is sure to go, if it is not 
 buried in some out of the way corner, all among the 
 moss, and dead leaves, and decayed wood, which have 
 accumulated there for centuries. We all remember the 
 old story of the Maid and the Magpie, and how nearly 
 the poor girl suffered death for the loss of the silver 
 spoons stolen by the bird, who, however, was not so 
 guilty after all, for he did not know that the loss of the 
 glittering objects which attracted his attention would 
 be attended with such serious consequences. He had 
 no sense of right and wrong to guide him as my readers 
 have, and had never been taught the great command- 
 ments " Thou shalt not covet !" and " Thou shalt not 
 steal !" 
 
 The chattering Magpie is found chiefly in the culti- 
 vated and wooded parts of Britain and Ireland ; it is an 
 omnivorous feeder, that is, it eats almost anything 
 omnes in Latin, you know, means all. It is a shy, 
 watchful bird, and very difficult to catch ; it has a fine 
 broad tail, but we never heard that any one was able 
 to put salt upon it. Such a quick eye the fellow has, 
 and a way of twisting himself about, so as to be looking 
 every way at once; you would catch a weasel asleep 
 sooner than you would Maggie. The nest is made with 
 a hole in the side, whence a sharp look-out can be 
 kept. It is placed in some thick bush or tall prickly 
 hedge, generally at a considerable distance from the 
 ground ; it is of a longish oval shape, and made of 
 sticks and thorns, cemented together with mud ; on the
 
 Familiar Birds. 173 
 
 lining of roots and grass lie the bluish-white eggs, 
 spotted over with grey and greenish-brown ; there may 
 be six, seven, or even eight of them, although very 
 rarely so many as the latter number. The breeding- 
 time is quite early in the spring, and the same nest is 
 resorted to by one pair of birds year after year. 
 
 It is thus that Bishop Mant describes the mode and 
 place of building of what he calls the "Artful Pie." 
 
 " On turf-reared platform intermixt, 
 With clay and cross-laid sticks betwixt, 
 'Mid hawthorn, fir, or elm tree slung, 
 Is piled for the expected young, 
 A soft and neatly-woven home, 
 Above of tangled thorns a dome, 
 Forms a sharp fence the nest about, 
 To keep all rash intruders out. 
 So like a robber in his hold, 
 Or some marauding baron bold, 
 On coasted cliff in olden time, 
 They sit unblenched in state sublime, 
 And fortress intricately planned ; 
 As if they felt that they whose hand 
 Is aimed at others, rightly deem 
 The hand of others aimed at them. 
 So there they dwell, man's dwellings nigh, 
 But not in man's society ; 
 Arabian-like : and little share 
 His love, nor for his hatred care ; 
 Prompt of his rural stores a part 
 To seize, and joyful of their art 
 His efforts at revenge elude."
 
 174 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 JAY. 
 
 GAY PIE. JAY PIET. 
 FIGURE 58. 
 
 j]N scientific language Curvus glandarius, 01 
 Garrulus glandarius. The specific name is 
 from the Latin, and signifies of or belonging to 
 .acorns ; the second generic name is also Latin, and 
 means chattering or talkative, a leading characteristic 
 of this bird, whose harsh cry is frequently heard amid 
 the stillness of the solitary woods. 
 
 " Proud of cerulean stains 
 From heaven's unsullied arch purloined, 
 The Jay screams hoarse," 
 
 says Gisborne, in his * Walks in a Forest,' and all 
 persons who are accustomed to woodland scenery must 
 have been startled, ever and anon, by the grating syl- 
 lables wrak, wrak, shortly and sharply repeated by this 
 bird, and have noticed the dull gleam of its blue wings, 
 as it passed in a heavy scurrying manner from tree to 
 tree, or shuffled away down the glade, as though it 
 had committed some crime, and was fearful of being 
 taken. 
 
 The Blue-winged Jay is a name commonly given to 
 this certainly handsome bird, whose plumage of delicate 
 brown, variegated with white and black, and set off
 
 
 ; yivY*
 
 Familiar Birds. 175 
 
 with " cerulean stains," as Gisborne says, give it a 
 striking arid pleasing appearance, notwithstanding its 
 general air of dulness and apprehension. It is true, 
 we seldom have an opportunity of observing it closely, 
 except in a state of confinement, where it is not likely 
 to be very lively, for it is a bird of the wild woods, 
 and likes not to be deprived of its free range, and 
 brought into close companionship with man. Some- 
 times, however, if taken young and properly trained, it 
 becomes a very amusing domestic pet, having a de- 
 cided talent for mimicry, and being gentle and 
 teachable. 
 
 The nest of the Jay is commonly built in a high 
 coppice wood or hedge, generally many feet from the 
 ground, although it is seldom seen near the tops of 
 tall trees, like those of the Magpie and Crow. Montagu 
 says, " He who feels inclined to study the nidification 
 of this bird must search the lower branches of the oak 
 or inspect the woodbine mantling round the hazel." 
 
 Morris describes the nest as " of an open shape, 
 formed of twigs and sticks, and well lined with small 
 roots, grasses, and horsehair. Some are much more 
 cleverly constructed than others/' And certainly from 
 the representation which he gives of one, we should take 
 the Jay to be a much neater builder than any of its 
 congeners, as birds of the same family or genus would 
 be called. 
 
 The eggs are five or six in number, of a greenish or 
 yellowish white, freckled all over with two shades of 
 light brown. 
 
 Several variations from this common pattern have
 
 176 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 been found and described, some being lighter and some 
 darker, and some having a greater degree of polish on 
 them than others. 
 
 The Jay is an omnivorous feeder ; but is said to have 
 a great partiality for acorns ; and also for the eggs and 
 young of game-birds, hence he is shot without mercy 
 by those interested in their preservation. 
 
 Let us see what Bishop Mant says of him. 
 
 " He who makes his native wood 
 Resound his screaming, harsh and rude, 
 Continuously the season through ; 
 Though scarce his painted wing you'll view 
 With sable barred, and white and grey, 
 And varied crest, the lonely Jay !"
 
 Familiar Birds. 177 
 
 GREEN WOODPECKER. 
 
 LARGE GREEN WOODPECKER. NICK-A-PECKER. ECLE. 
 HIGH-HOE. HEW-HOLE. AWL, OR RAIN-BIRD, OR 
 FOWL. POPINJAY. WHITTLE. YAFFLE. YAFFER 
 f APPINGALL. WOODSPITE. WOODWALL, OR WELE. 
 
 FIGURE 59. 
 
 |E have in England six species of Woodpeckers, 
 namely, the Black, the Green, the Greater 
 Spotted, the Lesser Spotted, the Hairy, and 
 the Three-toed, but only the one above-named is at all 
 common. It is a handsome bird, with green and brown 
 plumage, prettily marked and barred with white ; the 
 bill is large and black, which colour extends over the 
 sides of the head and part of the throat; there is a 
 light-coloured rim round the eye, and a crest like a 
 crimson cap, also a few feathers of the same rich colour 
 set in the black patches of the throat. A truly hand- 
 some bird, rather awkward in appearance, on account 
 of the shortness of the tail, and the large size of the 
 feet, head, and bill. A shy, unsocial bird, too ; not 
 fond of exhibiting its beauties ; for ever tap-tapping the 
 hollow beech, or other tree, in the depth of the solitary 
 woods ; often heard but seldom seen, and when it is, in 
 all sorts of inelegant positions, creeping up or down 
 the rugged bole, clinging to the broken bough, crouch- 
 ing close, and peeping and peering into every hole and
 
 178 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 crevice, in search of its favourite food insects and their 
 eggs, spiders, and grubs and caterpillars ; and boring 
 into the decayed bark with its hard wedge-shaped bill. 
 The old poet Chaucer describes a very busy, inquisitive 
 person as being 
 
 " As prate and prying as a Woodpecker, 
 And ever inquiring upon everything." 
 
 And Gisborne gives us a true picture of this restless and 
 curious bird : 
 
 " With shrill and oft-repeated cry, 
 Her angular course, alternate rise and fall, 
 The Woodpecker prolongs ; then to the trunk 
 Close clinging, with unwearied beak assails 
 The hollow bark ; through every call the strokes 
 Roll the dire echoes, that from wintry sleep 
 Awake her insect prey ; the alarmed tribes 
 Start from each chink that bores the mouldering stem ; 
 Their scattered flight with lengthened tongue the foe 
 Pursues ; joy glistens in her verdant plumes, 
 And brighter scarlet sparkles in her crest." 
 
 We have here perhaps a little bit of what is called 
 poetic licence ; true, it has been said that the Wood- 
 pecker taps on the tree to alarm the insects lurking 
 within, and make them come out to see what is the 
 matter, but it is most likely done to ascertain which are 
 the parts most unsound and pervious to the bill. In 
 the above lines is an allusion to the shrill cry of the 
 bird ; this, heard amid the stillness of the wood, is 
 perfectly startling ; like a peal of unearthly laughter, it 
 bursts forth and rings around ; it has been compared to 
 the syllables glu, glu, glu, gluck ! finishing off with a
 
 Familiar Birds. 179 
 
 sharp gk, as though a laugh, had tumbled down and 
 broken its neck, turning into something like a cry before 
 it expired. Only just as you are thinking it is really 
 dead and done for, out it bursts again louder than ever, 
 and you listen aghast to 
 
 " The ringing of the Whitwall's shrilly laughter. 
 Which echo follows after," 
 
 but is never able to overtake. And we are here re- 
 minded of the long array of names with which this noisy 
 fellow is honoured ; a different one for almost every 
 locality, and having reference mostly to the cry of the 
 bird, or its singular habits. The scientific name is 
 Picus viridis ; the first signifying a Woodpecker, and 
 the last green. 
 
 " The Woodpecker," says Mudie, " is especially a 
 bird of the ancient forests. You do not find it in the 
 hedge or the coppice, where so many of the little birds, 
 especially the summer migrants, build their nests, and 
 spend their mid-days, when the reflections of the sun 
 come bright on all sides of the foliage, in picking the 
 soft caterpillars from the leaves, or capturing the insects 
 that resort thither for the purpose of depositing fresh 
 myriads ; and when they have thus secured the shelter 
 and beauty of their habitation, farewell the evening, 
 and again hail the morning with their joyous songs. 
 The aged tree is all to the Woodpecker, and he is much 
 to the aged tree." Yes, for he eats the insects which 
 are revelling in its decay, and of the fine dust thereof 
 he makes his nest, if nest it can be called, which is 
 merely a hole in the trunk, high up, perhaps twenty
 
 180 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 or thirty feet, lined with the small particles of rotten 
 wood. 
 
 All the Woodpeckers lay white or nearly white eggs, 
 and all, with whose habits we are acquainted, are early 
 builders ; the common green species, found in most of 
 the southern parts of Britain, commences making a new, 
 or repairing its old nest as early as February ; the eggs 
 are from four to eight in number. The young are 
 hatched in June.
 
 Familiar Birds. 181 
 
 WRYNECK. 
 
 CUCKOO'S MATE, MAID, OR MESSENGER. RINDING, 
 SNAKE, TURKEY, BARLEY, OR TONGUE BIRD. EilMET- 
 HUNTER. LONG-TONGUE. 
 
 FIGURE 60. 
 
 HIS bird, which appears to be a kind of con- 
 necting link between the Woodpeckers and 
 Cuckoos, having some of the characteristics 
 of both, is only a summer visitant of this country, 
 generally arriving in April. Its scientific name is Yunz 
 torquilla ; the first is undoubtedly Greek, but its 
 meaning is not very obvious ; the second comes from 
 torqueo to turn or twist, and refers to a singular habit 
 which the bird has of twisting its neck with a kind of 
 slow undulating motion, like that of a snake ; hence 
 also the common English name Wryneck, and one or 
 two others given above. The Welsh consider this the 
 forerunner of the Cuckoo, and call it gwas y gog, or 
 the Cuckoo's attendant. In the northern counties of 
 England the common people call it Cuckoo's Maiden ; 
 it generally comes to us a few days in advance of that 
 bird, as though it were deputed to prepare a place 
 for it. 
 
 Although it can boast of no bright and gaudy colours, 
 the Wryneck is a most elegant bird, both in shape and 
 plumage.
 
 182 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 " The embroidery of that vesture grey 
 No pen nor pencil can pourtray," 
 
 says Bishop Mant. But it is seldom that one can get 
 a good sight of its beautifully marked and mottled dress, 
 for it is, like the Woodpecker, a shy and retiring bird ; 
 like that, too, it lays its eggs in a hole of a tree, lined 
 with the decayed wood ; they are six or seven in 
 number generally, sometimes nine, and even ten have 
 been found in one hole ; the colour is a pure white, or 
 slightly tinged and spotted with yellowish brown. The 
 time of incubation is fourteen days, and the female is 
 so much attached to the young birds, that she will 
 often suffer herself to be taken rather than desert 
 them. These birds resort to the same spot year after 
 year; it is at various heights from the ground, and 
 sometimes the deserted nest of a Woodpecker or other 
 bird is used.
 
 Familiar Birds. 183 
 
 NUTHATCH. 
 
 NUT-JOBBER. WOODCRACKER. 
 FIGURE 61. 
 
 j|HE Sittine Birds, or Nuthatches, are little 
 short-bodied creatures, with large heads, and 
 very small tails; the bill is tolerably long, 
 straight, and slender, pentagonal, or five-sided at the 
 base, or part "where it is inserted into the head. They 
 are pretty lively birds, and seem to occupy a position 
 between the Certhias, or Tree Creepers, and the Parine 
 Birds or Tits. We have but one species in this country, 
 known as the Sitta Europcea, or European Nuthatch ; 
 the generic name being derived, as Morris thinks, from 
 some word in a primitive, or early language (from 
 primus first) from which also comes the term hatchet, 
 and having reference to the habit of hacking and 
 hewing at the nuts, on which this bird chiefly feeds. 
 
 The Nuthatch is not found generally throughout 
 Britain, only in certain localities, and very rarely in 
 the northern parts. It has long curved claws, by 
 means of which it ascends the trunks of the trees, and 
 clings about the branches much like the Creepers and 
 Woodpeckers, frequently descending head downwards, 
 which few other birds are able to do. It bores into the 
 nuts with its strong pointed bill, and feeds upon the 
 kernels ; it also with the same instrument extracts the
 
 184 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 insects from the holes and crevices, and thus varies its 
 diet. Its motions are abrupt and jerking, so that it 
 always appears in a desperate hurry, and it keeps up a 
 constant quit, quit, as though giving warning to its 
 landlady of an intention to leave its lodgings forthwith. 
 Bewick says that it will pick bones, and that it lays 
 up a store of food for the winter in various little 
 granaries. 
 
 For a nesting-place it makes choice of some hole in 
 a tree, which it lines with dried leaves, moss, scales of 
 fir-cones, bits of bark, and, it may be, a little hair. If 
 the entrance is too large it is partly closed up with clay, 
 so as to leave but just room for the bird to enter. The 
 eggs are from five to seven or eight, sometimes nine in 
 number ; they are greyish white, with spots or blotches 
 of reddish brown. 
 
 The following interesting account of a pair of Nut- 
 hatches engaged in making their nest, is from the pen 
 of a contributor to a periodical called ' The Naturalist;' 
 the date of the occurrence was the 18th of April. 
 " The birds had fixed upon a hole in an ash tree, about 
 twenty feet from the ground, and were contracting it 
 with a plastering of mud, for which they flew to a 
 small pond about fifty yards distant from the tree, and 
 took pieces in their beaks about as big as a bean, which 
 they laid on, and smoothed with their chin. Sometimes 
 one of them would go inside and remain for a short 
 time, I suppose for the purpose of smoothing the mud 
 there. They would every now and then leave off from 
 their task, and chase one another up the trunk and 
 round the branches of the tree with amazing rapidity,
 
 Familiar Birds. 185 
 
 uttering all the while their flute-like whistle. They 
 both seemed to take an equal share in the labour ; 
 and had, like the House Martin, small pieces of straw 
 mixed with the mud, for the purpose of making it bind 
 better. They seemed to be quite at ease on the ground, 
 and hopped about much after the same manner as the 
 Sparrow. The male bird was easily distinguishable by 
 his brighter plumage."
 
 186 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 CUCKOO. 
 
 COMMON, OR GREY CUCKOO. GOWK, OR GECK. COG, 
 OF THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
 
 FIGURE 62. 
 
 ]F the Cuculine Birds, or Cuckoos, none are 
 permanently resident in countries subject to 
 severe winter cold. They feed mostly on 
 insects, worms, or soft fruit, gliding amid the trees in 
 search of their food in a peculiarly rapid and noiseless 
 manner. In passing from branch to branch they gene- 
 rally leap; they do not climb like the Woodpeckers 
 and Creepers, although they have much the same con- 
 formation of feet, the outer toe being directed back- 
 wards, as well as the first; this is called Zy-go-dac-ty- 
 lous, a Greek word, signifying that the toes are yoked, 
 or in pairs, two before and two behind. We have 
 thought it well to introduce this queer word to our 
 readers, lest they should stumble over it, as they are 
 likely to do, in many works on Natural History which 
 they may consult, and be frightened at its uncouth 
 appearance ; they will now know what is meant by 
 zygodactylous, or dactylic birds, such as Owls, Wood- 
 peckers, Cuckoos, etc. But having explained thus 
 much, we should go a step farther, and introduce also 
 A-ni-so-dac-ty-lous, Greek again, meaning unequally 
 yoked, that is, when there is a wider interval between 
 one pair of toes than between the other.
 
 Familiar Birds. 187 
 
 Of Cuckoos the British Naturalist knows of three 
 species ; the Great Spotted Cuckoo, inhabiting chiefly 
 the northern and western coasts of Africa, and only 
 now and then paying a short visit to these northern 
 climes ; the Yellow-billed, or American Cuckoo, or 
 Cowcow, as some call it, which is a more frequent, 
 although a still rare visitant, and the Common Grey 
 species, termed Cuculus canorus, that is, the Musical 
 Cuckoo, with whose curious cry cuck-oooo, most of our 
 readers must be familiar. It may not be generally 
 thought that there is much music in this monotonous, 
 that is, single-toned call, but we are assured by a com- 
 petent authority, that this is the only feathered per- 
 former who sings in strict accordance with musical 
 numbers, its notes being the fifth and third of the 
 diatonic scale. But be that as it may, the cry of the 
 Cuckoo is extremely pleasant to most ears, when first 
 heard, soon after the bird arrives in this country, which 
 is sometimes about the middle of April, "in April 
 come he will/' says the old proverb ; we kno\v that tht 
 fresh floral season of sunshine and country delights 
 has fairly set in, and all through the summer, to the 
 "time of his departure, in August or September, we love 
 to listen to the far-away, dreamy kind of call, for it 
 seems like an invitation to ' follow, follow,' some in 
 visible leader, through green woods and flowery dingles, 
 and into scenes of quietude and peace ; then, too, there 
 is a kind of mystery about it which excites the curiosity, 
 for who ever sees the utterer of these dreamy sounds. 
 We are inclined to say with Wordsworth,
 
 188 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 " Oh, Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, 
 Or but a wandering voice." 
 
 And indeed the Cuckoo is a flying and feathered marvel 
 altogether ; we should fill this book were we to repeat 
 all the strange tales that have been told about it, and 
 by grave authorities too, from Aristotle of ancient 
 Greece, to Dr. Jenner, and the rest of modern England, 
 Amid all the disputations that have arisen upon the 
 points of this bird's natural history, we can only clearly 
 gather that it is a summer migrant, coming and going 
 at the times just mentioned ; that while with us it is to 
 be found in all wooded and sheltered parts of the island, 
 frequenting most parks and pasture-grounds, groves 
 and thickets, it is more likely to be seen at early morn- 
 ing and evening, than during the broad daylight, and 
 its cry has been heard at all hours of the night, proving 
 it to be somewhat noctural in its habits, nox, you 
 know, is the Latin for night, and from thence comes 
 this word. 
 
 The Cuckoo lives almost entirely upon insects, de- 
 vouring great numbers of hairy caterpillars. It makes 
 no nest of its own, but lays a single egg in that of 
 some other bird, or conveys it thither in its bill. Its 
 eergs are small for the size of the bird, in colour white, 
 
 OO ' * 
 
 with a greyish, or it may be a reddish tinge, with cin- 
 ereous (that is, ashy) or grey brown speckles. How 
 many of these the bird lays no one can tell, but it has 
 the judgment, or compassion, or whatever it may be, 
 to give the Pipit, Hedge Sparrow, Wagtail, or other 
 small bird so favoured, the task of rearing but one of 
 its young, which soon grows to be quite a monster in
 
 Familiar Birds. 189 
 
 the eyes of its foster parent, and sometimes, says the 
 old Greek, Aristotle, eats her up ; but this is just a 
 physical impossibility, and a most vile slander. Whe- 
 ther the intruder, as Dr. Jenner says, shovels up with 
 its broad back its fellow fledglings, to whom the nest 
 rightfully belongs, and pitches them over the edge to 
 die miserably of cold and starvation, while he gets the 
 whole of the food brought by the provident mother, we 
 cannot say, but may hope, for the credit of bird nature, 
 that this too may be a mistake, if not a fable. 
 
 The Cuckoo is an elegantly formed and agreeably 
 coloured bird, the prevailing tints of its plumage being 
 a greenish grey, fading off into white, which is barred 
 and mottled with silky brown ; the large tail is spotted 
 and edged with white. The male resembles the female ; 
 the young at first have bars of light red and olive brown 
 about the upper parts.
 
 190 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 KINGFISHER. 
 
 COMMON KING, OR KINGFISHER. GLAS Y DORIAN OF 
 THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
 
 FIGURE 63. 
 
 HE Kingfishers belong to the order called 
 Jaculatrices , or Darters, and to the family 
 Alcedinae ; so they are Alcedine birds. These 
 terms are not very easy of explanation. Alcedo hispida 
 is the name of the Common Kingfisher. The second 
 term may mean either rough, or hairy, or wet, all of 
 which are quite applicable to this bird, which must be 
 familiar to many of our readers ; for although by no 
 means common in any part of Britain, and very rare in 
 the north, it is yet to be found, all the year through, in 
 most parts of the country where there are streams of 
 water, and river banks, and moist meadows suited to 
 its habits, which are solitary. It generally nestles in 
 holes in the declivities near to its favourite hunting 
 ground the clear stream, fringed with reeds and bul- 
 rushes, which glides away over pebbles that shine like 
 gold and silver, and weeds as green as emeralds, or red 
 as rubies, amid which dart the minnows and other 
 small fish, on which, together with aquatic insects, the 
 gorgeously-painted fisher feeds. You may see him in 
 some quiet out-of-the-way place, beneath the shade of 
 the grey alders, sitting motionless as a statue upon a 
 branch of an old thorn, that projects over the stream.
 
 Familiar Birds. 191 
 
 It may be that a ray of sunshine finds its way between 
 the shivering branches, and out flash the glorious tints 
 of its plumage red and green, and blue, and all change- 
 able colours. Truly he is the monarch of fishing birds, 
 and rightly named ./fm^fisher ! Not handsome in form, 
 certainly not elegant, nor Avell proportioned with his 
 short squat body and stump of a tail, thick neck, large 
 head, and immense bill, little feet, that seem meant for 
 a Sparrow, and eyes which, although bright and sharp 
 enough, are much too small for the head. But he is a 
 swift flier, for all that he looks so awkward ; and see ! 
 quick as light he darts down upon that heedless fish 
 that has come too near the surface, swallows it at a 
 gulp, and is ready for another dart before you can look 
 around you. 
 
 The eggs of our Common Kingfisher are what is 
 termed broadly ovate in shape, that is, they are nearly 
 round, not tapering out much, as some eggs do ; they 
 are simply white and semi (that is, half) transparent. 
 The number is generally six or seven. They are laid 
 some time in May, in a hole, often that of the water-rat, 
 sometimes on the bare earth, but more frequently on a 
 layer of small fish bones ; now and then on a little 
 dried grass. The note of the bird is sharp, shrill, and 
 piping, like that of the Sandpipers, but it is not often 
 uttered.
 
 192 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 SWALLOW. 
 
 RED-FRONTED, COMMON, OR CHIMNEY SWALLOW. 
 FIGURE 64. 
 
 HE Hirundine Birds, or Swallows, form a very 
 distinct group ; they have slender bodies, and 
 large, powerful wings, which enable them to 
 fly with great velocity, skimming over the moist mea- 
 dows, where their insect food most abounds, and wheel- 
 ing and circling about trees and buildings in a swift and 
 easy manner, which appears to be the very perfection 
 of motion. They are all migratory birds, coming to us 
 from Africa and the south of Europe to breed, and 
 returning to those warm climates to pass the winter. 
 
 The Common Swallow, called by naturalists Hirundo 
 rustica, the first word signifying a swallow, and the 
 second, of, or belonging to the country, generally arrives 
 in Britain in the latter half of the month of April, or 
 the beginning of May, some time in which month the 
 nest is commenced ; it is of a broad cup-like shape, and 
 is formed of moist earth, collected bit by bit from the 
 side of a pond or stream, and moulded together with 
 straw and grass : there is a lining of feathers, or some 
 other soft materials. The situations chosen are shel- 
 tered spots beneath eaves or projecting roofs of any 
 kind, shafts of mines, holes in the sides of pits and 
 quarries, old wells and out-buildings, bell turrets, the 
 under sides of spouts and bridge arches ; most usually
 
 Familiar Birds. 193 
 
 the spot selected is near human habitations. "Who is 
 not awakened in the bright summer mornings by the 
 twittering of the young birds near his bed-room win- 
 dow? These birds have frequently been known to 
 build in empty unused rooms, to which access could be 
 gained through a broken pane of glass ; they are said 
 to nestle near chimneys for the sake of the warmth, 
 being apparently not at all annoyed by the smoke 
 which issues thence. 
 
 The eggs of the Swallow are usually from four to six 
 in number ; they are white, thickly speckled over with 
 ash-coloured, dark red, or brown spots. Morris says 
 that two broods are frequently hatched in the year, the 
 first of which flies in June, and the second in August. 
 It is most interesting to see the parent birds tempting 
 them on from one resting point to another, and so 
 teaching them to use their w r ings, feeding them in a 
 most dexterous manner while on the wing ; it is said 
 that these careful parents, ere the young can provide 
 for themselves, bring them food about once in every 
 three minutes throughout the day. The male Swallow 
 is a handsome bird, the wings, long forked tail, head, 
 neck, and upper part of the breast being brownish 
 black, with a steely blue reflection, which is only seen 
 in certain lights. The forehead and throat are chest- 
 nut, and there is a tinge of the same on the delicate 
 white under parts of the body. Undoubtedly a hand- 
 some bird, and one of the most familiar of our feathered 
 friends while it remains with us, which is until the 
 autumn is fairly set in. You may know when the 
 Swallows are about to leave by their frequent consulta- 
 
 13
 
 194 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 tions on the roofs, and by the more frequent utterance 
 of their low and not unmelodious warble, which is very 
 different from the short, sharp cry, consisting of two 
 notes, which they utter occasionally when hawking, as 
 it is called, after insects. 
 
 Previous to their departure they may be frequently 
 observed wheeling in rapid circles in the air, as if try- 
 ing their wings, and drilling for their long, and no 
 doubt orderly fight. We might quote plenty of poetry 
 on this bird, for its beauty, grace of motion, and fami- 
 liarity with man, have made it ever a general favorite, 
 but for want of sufficient space we shall not be able to 
 make use of any. In some allusion is made to a notion 
 once entertained even by scientific naturalists, that the 
 Swallows did not actually leave this country in the 
 cold season, but hibernated, as it is called, from the 
 Latin hyems winter; that is, wintered here, passing 
 the time in a state of torpor, or sleep, somewhere out of 
 sight, as the dormouse and some other animals do. 
 But it is now certainly known that this is a false im- 
 pression ; a few young or sickly birds, unable to endure 
 so long a journey, may be, and no doubt are, left 
 behind ; these constitute but an exception to the rule 
 of annual migration.
 
 familiar Birds. 195 
 
 MARTIN. 
 
 WHITE-HUMPED, WINDOW, HOUSE, OR MARTIN SWALLOW. 
 MARTINET. HOUSE OR WINDOW MARTIN. MARTLETT. 
 
 FIGURE 65. 
 
 | HIS is the Hirundo urbica of naturalists, the 
 latter term coming from the Latin urbs a 
 city. Its plumage is of a more decided purple 
 tint than the Common Swallow, from which it is also 
 distinguished by the absence of chestnut brown on the 
 forehead, throat, and under parts, which in this species 
 are pure white. In its habits the Martin closely resem- 
 bles its congeners, than which it is, perhaps, even more 
 a house and city bird; hence its specific name. It 
 reaches our island generally a few days later than the 
 Swallow, and departs at about the same time 
 
 The eggs of this bird are four or five in number, of a 
 longish oval shape, smooth, and perfectly white. The 
 nest, which is composed of mud, so cemented and tem- 
 pered that it will adhere even to glass, is lined with 
 hay or feathers. Gilbert White, in his ' Natural His- 
 tory of Selborne/ a delightful book which all young 
 naturalists should read, says that there are generally 
 young birds in the nest up to Michaelmas, there being 
 two broods, and sometimes even three, in the year; the 
 first brood are generally ready to fly by the latter end 
 of May, and the second early in August : the period of 
 incubation is thirteen days.
 
 196 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 SWIFT. 
 
 COMMON, OR BLACK SWIFT. BLACK, OR SCREECH MAR- 
 TIN. SWIFT -SWALLOW. BEVELING SCREECH. 
 SCREAMER. SQUEALER. CRAN. MARTIN DU, OF 
 THE ANCIENT BRITISH. 
 
 FIGURE 66. 
 
 IKE the rest of our Swallows, this is a migra- 
 tory bird, and it remains with iis a shorter 
 time than most of the others, generally arriving 
 in May, and departing in August. Its scientific name 
 is Hirundo apus, meaning a Swallow without a foot, 
 derived no doubt from the small size of the feet, and 
 the little use it seems to make of them, being almost 
 constantly in the air, where its evolutions are peculiarly 
 rapid and graceful, even for one of its family. The 
 rapidity with which it skims and dashes along, wheel- 
 ing and turning in the most sudden manner, is truly 
 marvellous ; so great is the force of its forward impetus, 
 that it has been known to kill itself by dashing against a 
 wall ; it has been estimated that Wild Ducks fly ninety 
 miles an hour, and Swallows rather more, but the 
 Swift above two hundred miles an hour ; this may pos- 
 sibly be an exaggeration, but if we make a large allow- 
 ance, say one half, the rate of progress is something 
 astounding.
 
 Familiar Birds. 197 
 
 The note of the Swift is a harsh scream, hence 
 several of the common names by which it is known ; 
 it is generally uttered while pursuing its insect prey on 
 the wing, and may be considered as an exclamation of 
 triumph or delight, as much as to say " Ha, ha, I 
 have caught you !" 
 
 The Swift resorts much to ruinous castles, steeples, 
 towers, and precipitous rocks, for the purpose of build- 
 ing ; sometimes it nestles under the eaves of cottages 
 and barns, or in holes in walls, and hollow trees, &c. 
 The nest is rudely formed of sticks and straws stuck 
 together with mud ; the materials are picked up with 
 great dexterity while the bird is on the wing, and some- 
 times, it is said, the Sparrow or other small bird is 
 robbed of its goods and chattels by the impudent 
 stranger, which snatches them up, and is gone like a 
 flash of lightning. 
 
 The eggs are white, of a longish oval shape, and 
 seldom more than two or three in number. 
 
 This bird, like the rest of the Swallows, is pretty 
 widely diffused over the country during the time it re- 
 mains here ; it has a near relative called the White- 
 bellied or Alpine Swift, which is common in the south 
 of Europe, but which seldom comes so far north as this. 
 There are also belonging to this family of gliders, as 
 they are sometimes called, the Purple and Sand Mar- 
 tins, which are placed among British Birds ; the former 
 is common in America, but rare with us, the latter, the 
 smallest of the family, are not unfrequently found in 
 Britain.
 
 198 
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 The whole plumage of the Common Swift, with 
 the exception of a greyish white patch under the 
 chin, is blackish brown, with a bronzy green tinge, 
 which greatly relieves its otherwise dull appear- 
 
 ance.
 
 Familiar Birds. 199 
 
 NIGHTJAR. 
 
 GOATSUCKER. EUROPEAN OR NOCTURNAL GOATSUCKER. 
 DOG, OR NIGHT-HAWK. FERN, CHURN, OR JAR-OWL. 
 NIGHT-JAR, OR NIGHT-CHAR. WHEELBIRD. PUCK- 
 ERIDGE. RHODWR AND ADERYN Y DROELL, OF THE 
 ANCIENT BRITISH. 
 
 FIGURE 67. 
 
 * 
 
 j]O the above long list of names, we might add 
 two or three others by which different natural- 
 ists distinguish this remarkable bird, but the 
 most common of its scientific designations will be suffi- 
 cient ; this is Caprimulgus Europceus, the first name 
 being derived from the Latin caper a goat, and mulgio 
 to milk ; it having been at one time supposed that 
 the poor innocent bird was in the habit of sucking the 
 teats of the goats to obtain their milk ; and there are, 
 we believe, some ignorant persons in out-of-the-way 
 country-places, who still give credence to this absurd 
 notion, and even fancy that the udders of the cows, as 
 they lie asleep, are drained by that feathered depre- 
 dator, as they consider the Churn Owl to be. From 
 this supposed habit of the bird, and the whirring or 
 jarring noise which it makes when flying are derived 
 most of the names given above. 
 
 The Goatsucker flies chiefly by night, and is oftener 
 heard than seen ; whirr, whirr, whirr it goes, like a
 
 200 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 spinning-wheel, and the sound is interrupted every now 
 and then by a shrill whistle or scream, or a softer cry, 
 dec, dec, which it generally utters when getting on the 
 wing. White, of Selborne, says, that when a person 
 approaches the haunt of the Fern Owls, in an evening, 
 they continue flying round the head of the intruder, and 
 by striking their wings together across their backs, in 
 the manner that the pigeons called Srniters are known 
 to do, make a smart snap. He thinks it likely that 
 this is done by way of menace, to scare those who are 
 approaching their young. This author also observes, 
 that the powers of flight of this bird are truly wonder- 
 ful, exceeding, if possible, in graceful ease and celerity, 
 even those of the Swallow, than which it is a much 
 larger bird. 
 
 Its plumage is remarkably soft and downy, like that 
 of the Owl, and is prettily marked and mottled, the 
 colours being brown, yellow, and grey of various shades. 
 The eye is large and hawk-like, the bill small, the 
 mouth capable of great distension, and fringed with 
 small feathers, which have a very curious appearance. 
 
 The Goatsucker is pretty common throughout the 
 whole of England, but more so in the south than the 
 north; it is a migratory bird, arriving towards the 
 middle or end of May and departing in September. It 
 chiefly inhabits woods, moors, heaths, and commons^ 
 especially where fern and brushwood abound. Its food 
 consists chiefly of moths, beetles, and such insects as 
 are most frequently met with on the wing in the morn- 
 ing and evening twilight. 
 
 The nest consists of a few dead leaves huddled to-
 
 Familiar Birds. 201 
 
 getlier in some hollow in the ground, among the heath, 
 long grass, or fern; it is frequently found at the foot of 
 a furze or other bush. The eggs, two or three in num- 
 ber, are of a perfect oval shape, beautifully clouded and 
 streaked with grey and light brown on a white ground ; 
 they are laid in the beginning of July, in about the 
 middle of which month the young are generally 
 hatched. 

 
 202 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 RING DOVE. 
 
 RINGED DOVE, OR CUSHAT. QUEST, OR CUSHIE. 
 WOOD PIGEON. 
 
 FIGURE 68. 
 
 |F the Columbine birds, or Doves, we have in this 
 country four distinct species, three of which 
 are permanent residents, and one a summer 
 migrant. There is also a memher of the family, although 
 classed in a different genus, of which a few specimens 
 have heen taken in this country, namely, the Passenger 
 Pigeon of North America. All these are extremely 
 beautiful birds, and general favourites on that account, 
 as well as for their pleasing habits and manners, which 
 have mainly contributed to make the name of the Dove 
 synonymous with all that is gentle, and peaceable, and 
 loveable. It was a Dove, we may remember, which 
 first gave to Noah assurance that the waters had sub- 
 sided from the earth, by returning to the ark with an 
 olive leaf in its beak, since which, both bird and plant 
 have ever been emblematical of peace ; and it is under 
 the mystic semblance of a dove, that we find the Holy 
 Spirit personated in Scripture. 
 
 The particular species above named is termed by 
 most naturalists Columba palumbus, the first term mean- 
 ing a Dove or Pigeon, and the second a Wood Pigeon, 
 which, in this country, is its most common appellation, 
 although it is also frequently called the Ring Dove or
 
 Familiar Birds. 203 
 
 Cushat. This truly elegant bird occurs throughout the 
 whole of Great Britain and Ireland, frequenting most 
 the cultivated and wooded districts, where it does a 
 good deal of mischief by feeding upon the wheat, peas, 
 barley, and other agricultural produce ; it also partakes 
 freely of beech-mast and acorns ; it is graminivorous, 
 that is, feeding on grass ; as well as granivorous feed- 
 ing on grain. Its favourite resting-place is amid the 
 thick branches of tall trees, especially beech, ash, and 
 pine, in which most frequently its nest will be found; 
 just a few twigs, loosely put together in a circular form ; 
 it is generally from sixteen to twenty feet from the 
 ground. 
 
 The eggs are two in number, of a pure white colour, 
 and of a roundish form. Three broods are sometimes 
 produced in a season, the first of which is generally 
 abroad by the beginning of May, and the second about 
 the end of July. The period of incubation is sixteen 
 or seventeen days. 
 
 All must be familiar with the soft coo coo of this shy 
 bird ; heard in the summer woodlands, it falls on the 
 ear with a particularly soothing effect. In the winter 
 it congregates in large flocks, the number of the perma- 
 nent residents being then much increased by fresh 
 arrivals from the continent; and very beautiful they 
 look, flying about amid the snow, in their greyish blue 
 plumage, ornamented with black and white, green and 
 purple, and suffused on the breast with a reddish flush, 
 as though the light of the setting sun were shining on 
 them.
 
 204 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 STOCK DOVE. 
 
 BLUE-BACKED OR WOOD DOVE. 
 FIGURE 69. 
 
 \OLUMBA ^Enos is the scientific name of 
 this species. The first term, as you are aware, 
 means simply a Dove, the etymology of the 
 second is not so clear, most likely it comes from oinos 
 relating to wine, and alludes to the ruddy or vinous 
 tinge of the breast. This is a somewhat stouter bird 
 in the body than the last, and it wants the white patches 
 which so vary and enliven the plumage of the Ring 
 Dove, than which it is less elegant, although, perhaps, 
 its plumage is more rich and splendid, with that shift- 
 ing play of golden green and violet which all the Doves, 
 and some other of the feathered tribes present. But 
 for this, the plumage of our Stock Dove (so called, it is 
 said, because it is the original stock from which our 
 common domestic Pigeons are derived), would be con- 
 sidered plain and dull ; it is chiefly greyish blue, deep- 
 ening at parts into purple, and flushed here and there 
 with deep red; the legs of this, as of most Doves 
 and Pigeons, are light red, and the bill light brown or 
 yellowish. 
 
 " The Stock Dove builds in the old oak wood," 
 says Mary Howitt, in her beautiful song of the Phea-
 
 Familiar Birds. 205 
 
 sant, and so no doubt it often does ; but more fre- 
 quently, perhaps, in the fir plantation, or among the 
 beeches, or any other trees that present a suitable rest- 
 ing-place ; a hole in the trunk is frequently chosen, it 
 may be only four or five, or as many as forty or fifty 
 feet from the ground. Sometimes the flat and shallow 
 nest, just a few sticks loosely put together, is placed on 
 the ground itself, in a deserted rabbit-burrow, or some 
 other hollow place ; beneath furze bushes it is occa- 
 sionally found, and even in hedges and fruit trees near 
 to woods and coppices. 
 
 Nidification commences about the end of March or 
 beginning of April; incubation lasts about seventeen 
 days, and in a month from the time of hatching the 
 young are ready to fly. There are two or three broods 
 in the year. The eggs are white, somewhat smaller 
 than those of the Ring Dove, and more pointed at the 
 smaller end. The parent birds sit very close, and will 
 often allow themselves to be taken off by the hand ; 
 they evince great attachment for their young, as well 
 as for each other, and although several pairs may build 
 within a very limited space, they do not appear to 
 quarrel ; indeed gentleness and tenderness is the main 
 characteristic of all their motions, as well as of their 
 soft notes, the old familiar coo, coo, coo. In winter 
 they consort with the Ring Doves, but are not perhaps 
 so numerous m this country as these birds. They 
 migrate from place to place, and feed on hemp, rape, 
 and other seeds, young shoots of plants, berries, beech- 
 mast, acorns, and grain.
 
 206 Xests and Eggs of 
 
 ROCK DOVE. 
 
 WHITE-BACKED DOVE. WILD, OR ROCK PIGEON. 
 FIGtRE 70. 
 
 [CIEXTIFIC name Columba licia ; the latter 
 name probably from litida livid, blue, or 
 lead-coloured. It is held by some that this 
 species, and not the Stock Dove, has the best claim to 
 be considered the original of the Common Pigeon ; 
 others have confounded the species, although there 
 appears to be a very clear mark of distinction in the 
 white patch over the tail, which is never absent, the 
 broad black band across the grey wings, and the more 
 deep and distinct marking of the plumage altogether. 
 Besides, the habits of this bird differ considerably from 
 those of either of the other species. 
 
 It is, as its name implies, a haunter of rocks, in the 
 crevices and caverns of which it generally builds its 
 rude nest of twigs, and grass, and stalks of plants. It 
 is a social bird, building in companies ; the first eggs, 
 two in number, and white, are generally laid about the 
 middle of April, and the last towards the latter end of 
 August ; the young are fledged in about three weeks, 
 and after that, a few days' training by their parents, 
 enables them to fly and obtain their own livelihood. 
 They feed like their congeners, and are great grain- 
 eaters, only at times varying this kind of food with a 
 few snails. Like all the Doves they are swift flyers.
 
 Familiar Birds. 207 
 
 TURTLE DOVE. 
 
 RING-XECKED TURTLE. 
 FIGURE 71. 
 
 [HIS is perhaps the most beautiful, as it is also 
 the smallest and rarest of our native Doves ; 
 naturalists term it Columba turtur, of which 
 its English name is simply a translation; sometimes 
 the specific name auritus golden, is applied to it, and 
 this well describes the plumage of the bird, which has 
 a rich golden tinge throughout most parts of the plum- 
 age, the chief colours of which are brown and grey, 
 running off into yellow and white, flushed at places 
 with red, and elegantly marked with black. 
 
 With us, the Turtle Dove is migratory, generally 
 arriving towards the latter end of April, and departing 
 early in September; it is pretty much confined to the 
 southern and eastern counties, but few specimens having 
 been found in Scotland. It frequents the wooded dis- 
 tricts both hilly and flat, flies in small flocks, and feeds 
 on grain and seeds, peas, of which it is particularly fond, 
 and sometimes small slugs and snails: being fond of 
 drinking and bathing, it is commonly found in the 
 neighbourhood of streams and brooks ; in such situa- 
 tions may its soft note, tur, tur, doubtless the origin of 
 its name, be frequently heard, when the shy bird itself 
 is hidden amid the thick shade of the leafy boughs.
 
 208 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 Mr. Morris tells us that the nest is so slight and 
 carelessly constructed that the eggs may frequently be 
 seen from below; it is generally placed at some distance 
 from the ground, ten or twenty feet, and is commonly 
 well concealed among the foliage. The glossy white 
 eggs, two in number, and of a narrow oval form, are 
 generally laid about the middle of May, and the young 
 birds come forth in sixteen or seventeen days : there 
 are two or three broods in the year. 
 
 The prophet Jeremiah, we may remember, speaks of 
 this as a migratory bird, "Yea, the Stork in the heavens 
 knoweth her appointed times ; and the Turtle, and the 
 Crane, and Swallow observe the time of their coming." 
 The soft note of the bird is also spoken of by Solomon 
 as one of the signs of returning spring, " For lo ! the 
 winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers 
 appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is 
 come, and the voice of the Turtle is heard in our 
 land."
 
 Familiar Birds. 209 
 
 PHEASANT. 
 
 COMMON OR RING-NECKED PHEASANT. 
 FIGURE 72. 
 
 HIS glorious bird is the Phasianus Colchicus of 
 naturalists, the first term meaning a Pheasant, 
 and the second of Colchis, the ancient name 
 of a country of Asia Minor, whence it is said the 
 bird was originally brought into Europe, by the old 
 Greek navigators, called the argonauts, say some- 
 those who in the ship Argo sailed the seas under the 
 command of Jason, and went through a series of sur- 
 prising adventures connected with the bearing away of 
 a certain golden fleece from the King of Colchis, all of 
 which are faithfully reported in the mythology, for the 
 admiration and belief of the credulous. Certain it is 
 that if Jason had not with him such a treasure as a 
 golden fleece, he had in the Pheasant a golden bird, if 
 there really ever was such a person, and he did in 
 reality bring the splendid king of the English preserves 
 into Europe. 
 
 A description of the bird's gorgeous plumage we need 
 not attempt, as all of our readers must have seen it 
 hanging up in the poulterers' shops, if they have not 
 been startled by the sudden whirr of its wings as it rose 
 from the fern-brake or thicket at their approach, as 
 
 14
 
 210 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 they wandered amid the green woods where it delights 
 to dwell. 
 
 The nest of this hird consists of merely a few leaves 
 placed in a slight depression on the ground, sometimes 
 in the open field near to a preserve or plantation, but 
 more frequently among the underwood, in long grass 
 and in hedge-rows ; frequently the situation chosen is 
 beneath boughs that have been felled, or have fallen 
 from the tree. The laying of the eggs commences in 
 April or May ; incubation lasts from twenty-four to 
 twenty-six days ; the number sat upon varies from six 
 up to as many as fourteen ; more than this have been 
 found in one nest, but it was not likely to have been 
 the produce of a single hen ; the colour of the eggs is 
 pale olive brown, covered all over with very small dots 
 of a deeper tint. Poachers are ever on the look-out for 
 these eggs, as a sitting of them fetches a high price ; 
 they are generally, when taken from the nest, placed 
 under a common hen to be hatched. Some have been 
 found of a greyish white tinged with green. It is said 
 that Partridges are sometimes expelled from their nests 
 by these birds, which will sit upon their own eggs, 
 and those of the rightful owner of the nest, and hatch 
 them all. 
 
 Generally speaking, the Pheasant is a shy wary bird, 
 and with good reason, being such an object of pursuit 
 with sportsmen, as well as unlicensed depredators; 
 but where secured from molestation and well fed, 
 it becomes bold and familiar. Its general food is 
 grain of various kinds, peas, beans, nuts, and berries, 
 shoots and leaves of several plants, roots, and insects :
 
 Familiar Birds. . 
 
 it is particularly partial to sunflower seeds and buck- 
 wheat. 
 
 The variety called the King-necked Pheasant is 
 distinguished by a clear ring of white round the neck; 
 there is also a variety known as the Bohemian Pheasant, 
 which is of a stone-colour prettily marked and mottled 
 with black and brown. White and cream-coloured ones 
 occasionally occur.
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 BLACK GEOUSE. 
 
 BLACK GAME. BLACK COCK. FEMALE GREY OR BROWN 
 HEN. 
 
 FIGURE 73. 
 
 |HE meaning of the generic name of this bird 
 Tetrao, is by no means clear, neither is that 
 of its specific name tetrix : are they not both 
 derived from the Hindostanee word Teturl is the 
 query of Morris, who does not tell us what this tetur 
 means. 
 
 The Black Grouse, conspicuous for its large size, 
 glossy black plumage, forked tail, turning out like the 
 flakes of an anchor, and noble bearing, is, with the 
 exception of its near relative, the Capercaillie, or Cock 
 of the Woods, now only to be found in some of the 
 Scottish forests, the largest of our native game birds. It 
 is found chiefly in Scotland, where it frequents those 
 parts where there is a good growth of underwood or 
 heather, or other thick vegetation, and also plenty of 
 water, which appears to be necessary to its existence. 
 It is also found in many of the English counties, being 
 tolerably plentiful in Yorkshire and Northumberland, 
 and about Windermere, in Westmoreland. It feeds on 
 juniper and most other berries, and wild fruits, heather- 
 twigs, and young shoots of many plants ; the tops of 
 grasses, rushes, sedge, and buds of trees, turnip and rape 
 leaves, and even the young fronds of the fern.
 
 Familiar Birds. 213 
 
 The nest, which is placed in some marshy spot among 
 heath, or in plantations or hedge-rows, amid the rank 
 vegetation, is composed of grass or twigs, neatly laid 
 but not woven together. The eggs are from five to 
 eight or ten in number ; the colour is reddish yellow, 
 in some nearly white ; they are irregularly spotted with 
 reddish brown : they are generally laid in May. 
 
 A fine full-grown Black Cock will weigh nearly four 
 pounds ; and the Grey Hen, which has a sober dress of 
 brown and grey prettily intermixed, about half this 
 weight. They are birds much valued as table delica- 
 cies; and every year immense numbers are shot by 
 eager sportsmen, who leave the desk and the counter, 
 the senate-house and the drawing-room, to roam amid 
 the Scottish moors and mountains, and undergo fatigues 
 and privations with an endurance and perseverance 
 worthy of a better cause.
 
 214 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 RED GROUSE. 
 
 GOR, OR MOOR-COCK. MOOR, OR MUIR-FOWL. RED-GAME. 
 RED, OR BROWN PTARMIGAN. 
 
 FIGURES 74 & 75. 
 
 ETRAO, or Lagopus Scoticus, is the scientific 
 name of this species ; the meaning of the first 
 term is already explained, the second comes 
 from Lagos a hare, and pous a foot, and is given to 
 this bird because it has the lower joints of the leg, and 
 even the toes, feathered, differing in this respect from 
 the other kinds of Grouse. Scoticus means Scotch, and 
 indicates the country in which the species most 
 abounds, although it is also found in various parts of 
 England and Wales ; it is, however, peculiar to Great 
 Britain, and therefore the name Britannicus has been 
 suggested as a more appropriate generic name for it. 
 
 The Red Grouse is, perhaps, the most highly prized 
 of all game birds, and the wonder is that it continues 
 so abundant, notwithstanding the annual slaughter 
 which takes place in its breeding and feeding grounds, 
 which are mostly the open moors and hill-sides, where 
 there is plenty of heath and ling, and other low-grow- 
 ing plants of the like nature. It is especially partial to 
 the heather, which affords it both shelter and food. It 
 also feeds on various grasses and mountain berries, and 
 grain when its home is near cultivated districts, which 
 it generally, however, avoids, retiring as far as possible
 
 Familiar Birds. 215 
 
 from the presence of man, as though it knew and feared 
 him as its greatest enemy. 
 
 The nest of the Muir Cock, as the Scotch call it, is 
 formed of heather and grass, with a few of the soft 
 downy feathers of the hird, and is placed in a hollow of 
 the ground among the heath. The first eggs are laid 
 in March or April ; they are usually six or seven in 
 number, although sometimes they amount to twelve 
 and even more ; they vary considerably in colour, the 
 ground being usually a greyish white, with more or 
 less of a reddish brown or yellow tinge. They are 
 thickly dotted or clouded with dark grey and brown ; 
 the shape is a regular oval. 
 
 The Heath Poults, as the young are called, leave the 
 nest directly they are hatched, as do most of the game 
 birds, and are very soon able to fly. At first they lie 
 close, and may almost be trodden upon, but they get 
 more wild and wary as the shooting season advances ; 
 this commences in August.
 
 216 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 PTARMIGAN. 
 
 WHITE GAME, OR GROUSE. IN GAELIC, PTARMICHAN. 
 FIGURE 76. 
 
 jjlCH as is the plumage of the Red Grouse, with 
 its beautiful markings and warm sienna tint, 
 which prevails throughout every part except 
 the snowy legs, yet we are inclined to give the prefer- 
 ence to this, its close relative, for elegance of appear- 
 ance. It is all over of a pure delicate white, except 
 just the points of the toes, the larger tail feathers, the 
 bill, and a patch on each side of the head, which sur- 
 rounds the eye, all of black ; there is also, as in every 
 other species of Grouse with which we are acquainted, 
 a semicircular patch, like a piece of crimson velvet over 
 each eye. The edges of the white feathers are deli- 
 cately pencilled, as we see them in the Silver Pheasant, 
 so that they appear perfectly distinct from each other. 
 This is the winter dress, according well with the snowy 
 regions which the bird chiefly inhabits. In summer 
 the plumage in parts becomes brown and yellowish 
 grey of different shades, this dress also assimilating 
 well with the lichen-covered rocks of those Alpine 
 solitudes where the Ptarmigan must be sought. With 
 us it is found only in the Grampians, and others of the 
 Scottish mountains ; there it dwells in seldom-disturbed 
 security, feeding upon such plants as grow in these 
 elevated places, in winter descending lower, to obtain a
 
 Familiar Birds. 217 
 
 better supply of food, but never venturing into the 
 plain. 
 
 Its eggs, which vary from seven to twelve in number, 
 are sometimes laid on the bare earth, under the shadow 
 of a rock or some plant ; their colour is white, with 
 sometimes a green, yellow, or reddish tinge ; they are 
 blotted and spotted with dark brown. The laying does 
 not commence until June ; incubation lasts three weeks. 
 The young at first feed on insects. 
 
 The scientific name of this bird is Tetrao lagopus, the 
 meaning of which has already been explained, and 
 Lagopus vulgaris, that is, common, or mutus change- 
 able, in allusion to the variation in the colour of the 
 plumage.
 
 218 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 PAUTRIDGE. 
 
 COMMON OR GREY PARTRIDGE. 
 FIGURE 77. 
 
 f|HIS is one of the best-known and most esteemed 
 of our native game birds ; its scientific name is 
 Perdix cinerea, the first term meaning a Par- 
 tridge, and the last ash coloured, the prevailing tint of the 
 plumage of this species being ashy-grey and brown, with 
 a reddish tinge throughout. Beautifully marked and 
 mottled is the dress of the plump little Partridge, as 
 our readers know well delicately barred, and pencilled, 
 and variegated, as if to show what glorious effects may 
 be produced with two or three colours only. 
 
 Partridges are tolerably plentiful in nearly all parts 
 of Great Britain, where cultivation has smoothed the 
 rugged features of the landscape ; for, unlike the Grouse, 
 which retreat as man advances further and further into 
 the wilds of nature, these birds seldom go far from the 
 farm and the home plantations. Coveys, as the family 
 parties are called, are sometimes met with on the edges 
 of moors, and they often wander, as Mr. Morris tells us,, 
 to wastes and commons ; but their home is not there ;. 
 the clover, turnip, grass, or stubble field, is their cover 
 and resting-place ; there and in the coppice and along 
 the hedge-row they feed and build their nests, if the 
 placing a few loose straws in a hole scratched in the 
 ground can be called building; there they lay their
 
 Familiar Birds. 219 
 
 eggs, generally ten or twelve in number, although 
 sometimes more, and of a uniform pale greenish-brown 
 colour. Early in the spring, from the first to the middle 
 of February, may the not unpleasing call, chieurr, 
 chicurr, of these birds be heard ; and towards the end of 
 May or the beginning of June, the nest will most likely 
 be quite finished. The hen bird alone sits, the male 
 keeping watch, and, when the covey are hatched, assist- 
 ing to feed and protect them from their numerous foes. 
 The chicks run directly they are out of the shell, fre- 
 quently with portions of it sticking to them ; they are 
 very lively and nimble, and so escape many dangers, 
 But one brood is reared in the year, unless the first eggs 
 are broken, in which case others will be laid, and the 
 work of incubation recommenced, although the eggs 
 will be less in number, and the young, it is said, 
 weaker. It is related by Mr. Jesse as a curious fact, 
 that " when young partridges are hatched, and have 
 left the nest, the two portions of the shell will be found 
 placed one within the other." We have observed this 
 in eggs of the Common Fowl, and believe with the 
 above-named naturalist that it is done by the chicks 
 themselves, in their effort to escape from their con- 
 finement.
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 QUAIL. 
 
 COMMON OR WANDERING QUAIL. 
 FIGURE 78. 
 
 |HE Quail can scarcely be called a common 
 bird with us, although it may be found occa- 
 sionally in various parts of both England and 
 Ireland, and sometimes, though very rarely, in Scot- 
 land. It is migratory, generally arriving in May and 
 departing in September ; some few remain throughout 
 the year, and, scraping together a few bits of dry 
 grass, clover, or straw, make a rude nest in a hollow 
 place on the ground, and there deposit their eggs, 
 which are of a yellowish-, greenish-, or reddish-white, 
 blotched and speckled with brown. They vary in 
 number from six to fourteen, and even, it is said, 
 twenty ; the most common number is ten. The period 
 of incubation is about three weeks; the young, like 
 Partridges, run as soon as hatched. 
 
 The Common Quail is a plump little bird, not much 
 unlike the Partridge in its form, colours, and markings ; 
 but the head and throat are curiously barred with black 
 and white, and the distinct patch of the latter colour 
 beneath the chin gives the bird a very peculiar appear- 
 ance. Naturalists call this species Perdix coturnix, the 
 former term meaning a Partridge, and the latter a 
 Quail.
 
 Familiar Birds. 221 
 
 This is thought by some to be the bird with which 
 the children of Israel were fed in the wilderness, as 
 mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, and the 
 immense flocks which pass from country to country in 
 the migratory seasons, render the supposition likely. 
 It is said in Numbers xi, 31, that " There went forth a 
 wind from the Lord and brought Quails from the sea ;" 
 and it is well known that the direction of the wind will 
 often determine the flight of these birds. As many as 
 one hundred thousand are said to have been taken in 
 one day in the kingdom of Naples after an unusually 
 exhausting flight over the Mediterranean ; thousands 
 of dozens are sent every year into the London market, 
 where they are eagerly purchased : their flesh is esteemed 
 a great delicacy. 
 
 Quails are desperate fighters, and in some countries 
 are kept especially for the cruel " sport," as it is called, 
 which their pugnacious propensities afford. They feed 
 upon grain, seeds, young leaves, and insects ; and have 
 a shrill whistling note like whit, whit, which is called 
 " piping."
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 BUSTARD. 
 
 COMMON OR BEARDED BUSTARD. 
 FIGURE 79. 
 
 j|F you can fancy a bird in general conformation 
 something between an Ostrich and a Goose, 
 you will have a pretty fair notion of the Great 
 Bustard Otis tar da as naturalists call it, the first term 
 meaning a Bustard, and the second slow or lazy ; yet 
 lazy as he may be, this long-legged stalker is by no 
 means slow in his movements when once roused to 
 action; he runs with great swiftness, and, when he 
 does take wing, which he appears to do with difficulty, 
 has a strong and sustained flight. This is now a very 
 rare species in Great Britain, although once plentiful, 
 according to old writers, who state that it was customary 
 with greyhounds 
 
 " To bunt the Bustards in the fens." 
 
 A tall, strong, and stately bird is this, slow and sedate 
 in its general manners and movements, frequenting 
 plains, and heaths, and open moors, where it can have 
 a wide range of vision, and so be aware of the approach 
 of an enemy. The gradual extension of cultivation 
 over its favourite places of resort, and the incessant 
 war waged against it by sportsmen, anxious to bag 
 such a noble head of game, have nearly driven it from
 
 Familiar Birds. 223 
 
 our island. A specimen was shot as late as January, 
 1856, near Hungerford, in Berkshire. 
 
 The prevailing colours in the plumage of the Great 
 Bustard are white or bluish grey, and yellowish or 
 orange brown, with black mottlings ; the legs and beak 
 are dark horn colour ; underneath the chin is a plume 
 of narrow feathers, falling backwards, and partly cover- 
 ing the front and sides of the neck ; they are six or 
 seven inches long, and very light and graceful. 
 
 The Bustards are called graminivorous, but are 
 somewhat omnivorous feeders ; mice, frogs, worms, and 
 young birds are occasionally added to their usual vege- 
 table diet. We have a species called the Little Bustard, 
 much smaller than the one we have been describing, 
 and also a very rare bird. The eggs of both these 
 species are great treasures to collectors; those of the 
 larger kind are like what our artist has represented, of 
 an olive brown colour, clouded and spotted with ash 
 and rust colour. They are generally two in number, 
 laid on the bare earth, or in a hollow carefully lined 
 with corn stalks or grass ; the length is nearly three 
 inches. The eggs of the Little Bustard are more 
 decidedly green, with ashy or dull brown variations.
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 GOLDEN PLOVER. 
 
 WHISTLING, YELLOW, GREEN, GREY, OR BLACK-BREASTED 
 PLOVER. 
 
 FIGURE 80. 
 
 F the Pluveline Birds, or Plovers, we have 
 several species in this country, and the one 
 ahove named is the commonest. Naturalists 
 call it Pluvialis aurea, the first term meaning a Plover, 
 and signifying rainy, or pertaining to rain, and the last 
 golden, or Charadrius plumalis. Of the meaning of 
 this generic name we are obliged to confess our igno 
 ranee ; by some it is applied to all the Plovers, and by 
 others to the Sand Plovers only. This Golden species 
 is a very remarkable bird, both in its habits and appear- 
 ance ; all the under parts of the body, the breast, throat, 
 and sides of the head up to and above the eyes, are of a 
 deep velvet black ; then comes all round an edging of 
 white, which deepens into grey tinged with yellow ; and 
 then again all over the back, pinions, tail, and top of 
 the head, are black feathers, beautifully bordered and 
 barred with what appears to be gold embroidery. It is 
 a nimble, active bird, constantly running about on the 
 open plains and ploughed fields in search of food, which 
 consists of insects of various kinds, green corn, and 
 leaves of vegetables, small berries, &c. ; or in flying 
 hither and thither in the air, now close to the ground, 
 as if about to settle, and then with a sudden upward
 
 '&6& 
 
 . 
 
 'iL\' 
 
 :*7 * 
 * *> 
 
 5C?/t* :
 
 Familiar Birds. 
 
 wheel urging a strong and swift flight to some 
 distant part of the field or sea shore, which is a favour- 
 ite resort in winter, where the birds collect in 
 large flocks, uttering their wild shrill whistle, which 
 harmonises well with the sounds of the winds and 
 waves. 
 
 The Golden Plover may be found all over Britain, 
 where it remains throughout the year, generally re- 
 sorting to the heaths, downs, or marshes, to breed. Its 
 nest is merely a few stems of grass and vegetable fibres, 
 laid in a slight hollow in the ground, just about large 
 enough to contain the eggs, which are usually four in 
 number, of a yellowish stone colour, blotted and spotted 
 with brownish black. They are generally placed with 
 great regularity, with the smaller ends meeting in the 
 centre; they are laid early in June. The young leave 
 the nest as soon as hatched, and are able to support 
 themselves in a month or five weeks. 
 
 15
 
 226 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 DOTTEREL. 
 
 DOTTREL. DOTTEREL PLOVER. 
 FIGURE 81. 
 
 j|HIS, the Charadrius morinellus of naturalists, 
 is another lively and beautiful bird, more so, 
 perhaps, than the species last described, having 
 greater variety and more distinct markings in the 
 plumage. The crown and sides of the head are black, 
 with a white band proceeding from above each eye, 
 running down into a point, and nearly meeting another 
 band from the back of the head ; the throat is white, 
 tinged and spotted with grey, which is the colour of the 
 breast, which is divided from the orange-coloured belly 
 by a broad waved band of white; black and bright 
 yellow complete the under parts ; the back, wings, and 
 tail are brown and black, the larger feathers being 
 distinctly edged with golden yellow. 
 
 " The Dotterel," says Morris, " has acquired the 
 character of being a foolish bird, hence its English 
 name from the word to dote, and its Latin one from the 
 word morio a foolish fellow. The bird was formerly 
 supposed to imitate the actions of the fowler, and so to 
 fall into the trap, instead of providing for its escape by 
 a timely flight." 
 
 The Dotterel, which is a migratory bird, frequents 
 open and exposed situations, wide heaths, and barren
 
 Familiar Birds. 
 
 mountainous districts, where it generally breeds, Any 
 hollow in the ground serves it for a nest, which is com- 
 posed of a few lichens, not woven, but merely laid 
 together. The eggs are seldom more than three in 
 number; they are generally laid in June ; the colour is 
 deep yellowish-brown, or it may be a fine grey, thickly 
 spotted, especially about the darker end, with dark or 
 reddish-brown and deep grey.
 
 228 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 RINGED PLOVER. 
 
 RING, OR STONE PLOVER. RINGED DOTTEREL. SAND 
 LARK, OR LAVROCK. DULL-WILLY. SANDY-LOO. 
 
 FIGURE 82. 
 
 \HARADRIUS hiaticula is the scientific name 
 of this species ; we have already confessed our 
 ignorance of the meaning of the first term ; 
 according to the old naturalist Pliny, it is " a bird the 
 seeing of which cures those that have the jaundice ;" 
 but we must say that we are extremely doubtful if the 
 sight of any bird included by modern naturalists in the 
 genus Charadrius would have such a wonderful effect. 
 The Latin dictionary tells us that the term comes from 
 the Greek, and that one of its meanings is terrce fissura, 
 which we may translate furrowed earth; so that the 
 name may have reference to the bird's real or supposed 
 habit of haunting the furrows of the ploughed field, or 
 the rough uneven ground of rocky shores or barren 
 places. With regard to the specific name hiaticula, we 
 have something very like it in English hiatus, a break, 
 an aperture, or opening ; the Latin word from which it 
 monies is precisely similar. Why applied to this bird 
 we cannot tell, except it be from its being chiefly found 
 on broken and uneven ground. 
 
 The Ring Plover, or Dotterel, is altogether a shore 
 bird, and may be found on most parts of the British
 
 Familiar Birds. 229 
 
 coast, and along the margins of the creeks, estuaries, 
 and tidal rivers, and sometimes by the inland lakes and 
 ponds. It is a bright lively creature, with party- 
 coloured plumage of black, brown, and white. It plays 
 about on the sands, following the retiring tide, and 
 fleeing before its advance, as we see children do ; its 
 silky feathers ruffled by the wind, and its shrill clear 
 whistle making pleasant music amid the rocks, and over 
 the wide wild ocean scenery. Its eggs are laid in some 
 slight natural hollow in the sand or small gravel, 
 sheltered by a tuft of reeds or coarse herbage, sometimes 
 just above high- water mark, but frequently in the 
 marshy grounds further inland ; they are four in number, 
 of a greenish-grey, buff, or cream-colour, spotted and 
 streaked with grey and black, or dark brown. 
 
 These birds generally pair in May ; the male and 
 female both sit on the eggs, and are very careful of 
 them and the young. Their general food is worms, 
 marine and other aquatic insects, shrimps, and small 
 crustaceous animals. On moonlight nights they may 
 be seen searching diligently with quick and incessant 
 movements, their white plumes flashing here and there 
 like silver.
 
 230 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 LAPWING. 
 
 COMMON, CRESTED, OR GREEN LAPWING. GREEN PLOVER. 
 LAPWING SANDPIPER. PEWIT. TEWIT. TEACHET. 
 PEESE-WEEP. FRENCH PIGEON. 
 
 FIGURE 83. 
 
 \ANELL US cristatus is the scientific name of 
 this beautiful bird ; the first term may perhaps 
 come from vannus a fan, and be given to it 
 on account of the graceful fan-like motion of its glossy 
 green pinions, as it skims along the shore, or over the 
 wide heaths, or low lying marshes, which it most 
 frequents ; the specific name means crested, and has 
 reference to the crest of long black feathers which adorn 
 the head, and can be raised nearly straight up or de- 
 pressed at pleasure. We have called this a beautiful 
 bird, and truly so it is, with bronzy green and coppery 
 reflections playing over its black back, breast, throat, 
 wings, top of the head, and end of the tail; the breast, 
 back, and sides of the neck are pure white, as is part 
 of the tail, and a long patch on each side of the head ; 
 the legs, belly, and under side of the tail, are all bright 
 orange colour ; and then its long shining crest gives it 
 such a pert and comical air, that it is quite a pleasure 
 to behold. 
 
 Lapwings, or Peewits, as they are more generally 
 called, from their shrill cry, which sounds like the
 
 Familiar Birds. 231 
 
 syllables pe-wit, or pees-wit, are tolerably familiar birds 
 with us, being found in summer on most wet heaths, 
 moors, and marshy pastures. It nestles in April, and 
 lays its four eggs, which, in general, are of a dull green 
 colour, blotted and irregularly marked with brownish 
 black, in April. A slight depression in the ground, 
 with perhaps a few straws for lining, suffices for a nest ; 
 it is sometimes placed amid a tuft of rushes or long 
 grass. Being considered delicate food they are eagerly 
 sought for, and great numbers are every year taken and 
 exposed for sale in the poulterers' shops in London and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The Lapwing feeds on worms and insects, runs with 
 great speed, and has a quick flight, although the flap- 
 ping of its wings is heavier and more measured than 
 that of the Plovers.
 
 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 TURNSTONE. 
 
 COMMON, OR COLLARED TURNSTONE. HEBRIDAL 
 SANDPIPER. 
 
 FIGURE 84. 
 
 jjHIS is a very remarkable bird with regard to 
 personal appearance, having a variegated dress 
 of black, white, and brownish red, with little 
 fading or running off into the other, so that the colours 
 are strongly contrasted ; it has a tolerably heavy body, 
 a strong stout bill of moderate length, and longish thick 
 legs, which are of a dull orange colour, the toes termi- 
 nating in strong black claws, very useful in what 
 appears to be the chief occupation of the bird, namely, 
 turning up the stones and pieces of rock on the shore, 
 in search of the sea-worms and small shell-fish which 
 lurk beneath; farther inland it searches in the same 
 way for beetles and other insects ; hence its common 
 name Turnstone, and Collared Turnstone, from the 
 distinct white mark which passes over the neck and 
 down each side of the breast, until it nearly meets 
 beneath. In the Hebrides we find that it is called a 
 Sandpiper, because it closely resembles, in habits and 
 general conformation, some of the birds which belong 
 to the Tringa, or Sandpiper genus, of which there are 
 several species in this country. 
 
 The most commonly used scientific name of the
 
 
 Ih ** 
 
 :& 
 
 m 
 
 & 
 
 /z 
 
 ^^r^
 
 Familiar Birds. 233 
 
 Turnstone is Strepsilas interpres rather a difficult 
 name to translate. The first term appears to come 
 from two Greek roots, Strepho to turn, and laas a 
 stone ; the second term may mean an interpreter, and 
 is applied to the bird, as Morris conjectures, from its 
 habit of careful investigation, and turning over, as a 
 translator does the leaves of a book. So we may set 
 down our feathered friend, who goes poking and prying 
 into holes and turning up stones, as one who likes to 
 see the bottom of things. It is well for my readers to 
 have the like inclination, to possess an inquiring mind, 
 so that they pursue their investigations with a due 
 regard to the wishes and interests of others, and are not 
 merely curious and Paul Pryish, if we may use the 
 term. The secrets of nature cannot be too closely and 
 perseveringly investigated, and in her domains much 
 information may often be gained by becoming a Turn- 
 stone. 
 
 This bird is one of our winter visitants, arriving, 
 says Morris, at the end of August ; the Scottish natu- 
 ralist, Macgillivray, we see, says, " visiting our coasts at 
 the end of October." Perhaps he refers more particu- 
 larly to Scotland and the northern parts of the island ; 
 both agree in assigning May as the latest date of 
 departure. 
 
 The Turnstones frequent rocky and gravelly places 
 more than the smooth level sands. They are active 
 energetic birds, running swiftly, and flying rapidly 
 with regular well-timed beats of the wings, sometimes 
 in a direct course, but oftener in curves. They have a 
 clear twittering or whistling cry, uttered frequently
 
 234 Nests and Eggs of 
 
 while flying. Their time of breeding is about the 
 middle of June, when they are found on the coast 
 of Norway and other northern countries of Europe. 
 They lay their eggs on the sandy and rocky shores, 
 sometimes amid the stunted herbage, but often in a 
 slight hollow, natural or scraped out for the purpose, 
 and lined with a few blades of grass. The eggs are 
 four in number, of a reddish olive cast, spotted with 
 dark grey, greenish brown, and black, some very thickly, 
 others not so much so. They are smaller than the eggs 
 of the Peewit, and more rounded in shape. Hewitson 
 has remarked that those which he met with in Norway 
 had a beautiful purple or crimson tinge. 
 

 
 Familiar Birds. 235 
 
 OYSTER-CATCHER. 
 
 PIED OYSTER-CATCHER. SEA-PIE, OR PIET. PIANET. 
 CHOLDRICK. OLIVE. 
 
 FIGURES 85 AND 86. 
 
 jjHIS is another queer-looking customer, that 
 one would scarcely like to call either hand- 
 some or ugly. A stout body, a short thick 
 neck, a long strong bill, and slenderish legs of consider- 
 able length, as befits a wading bird, of a dingy orange 
 colour, very large feet, with black toes. The bill is of 
 a dull yellow, and the plumage throughout of two 
 colours only, black and white, hence the term ' pied ' 
 applied to the bird, which bears the very pretty scientific 
 name Heematopus ostralegus, which we shall take the 
 liberty of dissecting to get at its meaning. Aima is 
 Greek for blood, as pom is for foot ; hence comes the 
 Latin word Hamatopus a Red-shank; ostrea is the 
 Latin for oyster, and lego in the same language means 
 to collect; so our readers may put this and that to- 
 gether, and they will know as much about the matter 
 as we do. 
 
 The Oyster-catcher, so called from its feeding on 
 oysters and other shell-fish, is a constant resident on 
 nearly all our coasts, in many parts of which it is said 
 to be abundant. It makes its nest in a hollow among 
 the gravel or shingles, and sometimes lines it with a 
 little dry grass, or fragments of marine plants, but more
 
 236 Nests and Eggs of Familiar Birds. 
 
 frequently a mixture of broken shells, in the arrange- 
 ment of which considerable care appears to be taken, 
 the bird sometimes making two or three nests before it 
 completes one to its perfect satisfaction. The eggs are 
 generally four in number, of a yellow stone-colour, 
 spotted with grey and dark brown; sometimes the mark- 
 ings are drawn out long, more like scratches, or the 
 scrawlings of a bad penman. Considerable varieties 
 occur in the ground colour, some having been found of 
 a very light greyish yellow, others of a deep reddish 
 brown, and nearly all intermediate tints. The situa- 
 tions of the nests, too, occasionally vary, some, accord- 
 ing to Morris, having been met with on isolated rocks 
 at a height of ten or fifteen feet from the ground. The 
 time of incubation is three weeks.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Golden Eagle . 
 
 24 
 
 Willow Warbler . 
 
 . 89 
 
 Peregrine Falcon . 
 
 . 28 
 
 Chiff Chaff . 
 
 91 
 
 Kestrel .... 
 
 31 
 
 Wren 
 
 . 93 
 
 Sparrow- Hawk 
 
 . 35 
 
 Goldcrest 
 
 96 
 
 Barn Owl 
 
 37 
 
 Great Titmouse . 
 
 , 100 
 
 Red-backed Shrike . 
 
 . 41 
 
 Blue Tit 
 
 . 102 
 
 Spotted Flycatcher 
 
 44 
 
 Long-tailed Tit 
 
 . 105 
 
 Dipper 
 
 . 47 
 
 Pied Wagtail 
 
 . 109 
 
 Missel, or Mistle Thrush 
 
 49 
 
 Grey Wagtail . 
 
 . Ill 
 
 Song Thrush . 
 
 . 52 
 
 Tree Pipit . 
 
 . 113 
 
 Blackbird 
 
 55 
 
 Meadow Pipit . 
 
 . 115 
 
 Ring Ouzel . . 
 
 . 58 
 
 Sky Lark 
 
 . 118 
 
 Dunnock . . . 
 
 59 
 
 Wood Lark 
 
 . 122 
 
 Redbreast . 
 
 . 62 
 
 Bunting 
 
 . 123 
 
 Redstart 
 
 66 
 
 Black -headed Bunting 
 
 . 124 
 
 Stonechat . 
 
 . 68 
 
 Yellow-hammer . 
 
 . 126 
 
 Winchat 
 
 70 
 
 Chaffinch . 
 
 . 129 
 
 Wheatear . . 
 
 . 72 
 
 House Sparrow 
 
 . 132 
 
 Sedge Warbler 
 
 74 
 
 Greenfinch . . 
 
 . 136 
 
 Reed Warbler . 
 
 . 76 
 
 Goldfinch 
 
 . 138 
 
 Nightingale . 
 
 78 
 
 Linnet . . 
 
 . 141 
 
 Blackcap . . . 
 
 . 82 
 
 Lesser Redpole . 
 
 . 144 
 
 Garden Warbler 
 
 84 
 
 Bullfinch . 
 
 . 146 
 
 Whitethroat 
 
 . 86 
 
 Crossbill . . 
 
 . 149 
 
 Wood Warbler 
 
 88 
 
 Starling ... 
 
 . 152
 
 238 
 
 Index. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Chough . 
 
 . 154 
 
 Ring Dove 
 
 . 202 
 
 Raven . . . 
 
 . 156 
 
 Stock Dove . 
 
 . 204 
 
 Carrion Crow 
 
 . 160 
 
 Rock Dove 
 
 . 206 
 
 Hooded Crow . 
 
 . 162 
 
 Turtle Dove . 
 
 . 207 
 
 Rook . 
 
 . 164 
 
 Pheasant . 
 
 . 209 
 
 Jackdaw . 
 
 . 168 
 
 Black Grouse 
 
 . 212 
 
 Magpie 
 
 . 171 
 
 Red Grouse 
 
 . 214 
 
 Jay .... 
 
 . 174 
 
 Ptarmigan 
 
 . 216 
 
 Green Woodpecker 
 
 . 177 
 
 Partridge . 
 
 . 218 
 
 Wryneck . 
 
 . 181 
 
 Quail . 
 
 . 220 
 
 Nuthatch 
 
 . 183 
 
 Bustard . 
 
 . 222 
 
 Cuckoo . . 
 
 . 186 
 
 Golden Plover 
 
 . 224 
 
 Kingfisher 
 
 . 190 
 
 Dotterel . 
 
 . 226 
 
 Swallow ... 
 
 . 192 
 
 Ringed Plover 
 
 . 228 
 
 Martin . . 
 
 . 195 
 
 Lapwing . 
 
 . 230 
 
 Swift 
 
 . 196 
 
 Turnstone 
 
 . 232 
 
 Nightjar . . 
 
 . 199 
 
 Oyster Catcher . 
 
 . 235
 
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