556 CORVUS MONEDULA. 



it frequents Heriof s and Watson's Hospitals, tlie University, 

 the Infirmary, the Chapel of Holyroodhouse, and the Castle, 

 although in the latter it is chiefly in the rock that it takes up 

 its abode. In the country, ruinous castles are its favourite 

 places of resort, and it is found, for example, at Dunottar, 

 Rosslyn, and Tantallon Castles, and the buildings on the Bass. 

 It also not unfrequently finds refuge in high rocks, as at the 

 Cove near Aberdeen, and in other places along the coast ; and 

 in defect of more agreeable lodgings, will sometimes settle in a 

 wood. 



In these places also it nestles, as well as not unfrequently in 

 the interior of chimneys in which fire is not kept. The nest 

 is fixed in any convenient recess, on a cornice or other project- 

 ing part of a building, in the hole of a spout, or, in short, in 

 any place that seems suitable. It has a base-work of sticks, 

 on which is laid a quantity of stravr, wool, feathers, and other 

 soft materials. The eggs are from four to seven, generally five, 

 of a regular oval form, broader in proportion to their length 

 than those of the other species, much lighter also, being of a 

 very pale greenish-blue, or rather bluish- white, covered, more 

 profusely at the larger end, with small, round, separated spots 

 of dark brown and pale purplish. They vary in length from 

 an inch and four twelfths to an inch and six twelfths, in dia- 

 meter from eleven and a half twelfths to a twelfth more. The 

 eggs are generally deposited in May, and the young are abroad 

 by the end of June. 



Like the Wheatear, it has sometimes been found to nestle 

 in a rabbit's hole. Thus, White relates that a gentleman re- 

 siding near Chichester informed him that " many daws build 

 every year in the rabbit burrows under ground. The way he 

 and his brothers used to take their nests, while they were boys, 

 was by listening at the mouths of the holes, and if they heard 

 the young ones cry, they twisted the nest out with a forked 

 stick." " Another very unlikely spot," he adds, " is made use 

 of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. 

 These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the 

 upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of anti- 

 quity ; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height 



