A Single-handed Lower 285 
The Blue Rock Thrush is a delightful bird to watch, alike in 
its wild state and when in an aviary. I have reared several from 
the nest and so can testify to their engaging habits. They are 
extremely wary, as all who have ever striven to find their nests 
will testify, and I verily believe that when they have reason to 
suspect that they are being watched, they will go to great pains to 
mislead the enemy by simulating an immense interest in some crag 
where they are zof nesting. Anyway such has been my experience, 
year after year, and I have repeatedly witnessed and suffered from 
such tactics. Naturally enough, as soon as I made the acquaint- 
ance of these birds I set myself to discover their nests. Here for 
a time at any rate, I met with more than my match, and for three 
years in succession I was fairly beaten. Thus in 1875 I was 
ignorant of their time of nesting and only found a nest on 
22 May, when the young were fully grown and on the wing. 
In 1876 I was equally unsuccessful. In 1877, when engaged in 
watching an Eagle’s nest with Major Robert Napier (now Lord 
Napier of Magdala), we noticed a pair of Thrushes which were 
evidently nesting not far off. Eventually, the hen carrying a centi- 
pede in its beak, flew up to and entered a deep vertical cranny 
in the cliff close to the Eagle’s nest. The crag was not qo ft. 
high and the cranny only a few feet below the edge and just 
below an overhanging piece of rock. | Napier lowered me down and 
after some trouble I got my toes well jambed into the crevice and 
somehow managed to haul myself in under the rock and reach 
the nest which contained five young birds fully fledged: these | 
transferred to the bosom of my shirt. The return journey up— 
there was not enough rope to lower me down—involved an 
awkward struggle both for myself and my companion, for of course 
as soon as I let go of the rock I swung outwards and demonstrated 
the mistake of one man lowering another single-handed at a point 
where there is no handhold for the climber. I made a sketch of 
