Birds, 465 



quite silent, being eager and intent upon securing its prey, as 

 it passes and repasses with the utmost velocity, and at the 

 same time flying much lower than it is wont at midday to do. 



I have great pleasure in forwarding you specimens of the 

 nests. No. 1. taken on May 22. ; No. 2. on June 27.; which 

 will speak for themselves. — J. D. Salmon, 



[Both nests are neat ones. No. 1. seems as if it has been 

 much used: the feathers about its interior surface are not 

 numerous, and have a trodden battered appearance : it is re- 

 markable that a twig, the thickness of the tine of an eating- 

 fork, as tough as wire, passes at the bottom of this nest across 

 its longer axis. No. 2. is a nest much thicker in its walls, 

 which are interiorly coated with many feathers, several of 

 which retain their expanded form. The viscous matter, by 

 which the materials are cemented together, is obvious in each 

 of the nests. We have given them both to Mr. E. Blyth.] 



[I have not seen a swift since July 25. and they appear to 

 have left this village even some time before that: I think we 

 see fewer and less of them every year. — W. T, Bree, Alles- 

 ley Rectory^ in a letter dated Aug. 7. 1834.] 



A Pair of the Wryneck ham steered their Nest to he removed 

 and replaced Five Times, and Four Layings of Eggs to betaken 

 a*way, before they would quit the Place of attempted Incubation. 

 — I was wishing, last spring, to obtain the eggs of the wry- 

 neck to place in my cabinet, and accordingly watched very 

 closely a pair of this bird that had resorted to a garden in this 

 village, for the purpose of incubation ; I soon ascertained that 

 they had selected a hole in an old decayed apple tree for that 

 purpose, the entrance to which was so small, as not to admit 

 my hand. The tree being hollow and decayed at the bottom 

 near the ground, I was enabled to reach the nest by putting 

 my arm upwards ; and I found, on withdrawing the nest, that 

 the underneath part of it was composed of moss, hair, &c., 

 having every appearance of an old one of the redstart's of the 

 preceding summer ; which, I suspect, was the case : the upper 

 part was made of dried roots. The nest did not contain any 

 eggs, and I returned it by stuffing it up in the inside of the 

 tree. On passing by the same tree, about a week afterwards, 

 my attention was arrested by observing one of the birds leav- 

 ing the hole, upon which I gently withdrew the nest, and 

 was much gratified at finding it contained five most beautiful 

 glossy eggs, the shells of which were perfectly white, and so 

 transparent that the yolks shone through, giving them a deli- 

 cate pink colour, but which is lost in the blowing. [This is 

 the case with the egg of the kingfisher.] I replaced the nest, 

 and visited it during the ensuing week, and was induced, out 



VoL.VII. — No. 41. HH 



