The Black Wheatear 289 
The sentry and inevitable cook deducted, this gave me two men 
_ 
g 
to lower me over the edge. As I came opposite the weep-hole 
I saw to my intense joy a nest of fibrous roots containing five 
beautiful pale blue eggs! These were, as is their characteristic, 
most delicately transparent, thus differing from the eggs of our 
Starling which are more opaque. Thus in the fifth year of my 
labours did I at last attain success. Since then I have, from time 
to time, when exploring caverns or working my way amid crags or 
across the face of some big cliff, come upon many nests of this bird. 
Owing to the peculiarly sheltered situations in which they build, 
their nests remain for years in very fair preservation; hence the 
climber sees many more nests than there are pairs of birds in the 
locality. On three occasions I have thus chanced upon nests with 
five eggs and on others some containing less, but none of these 
has given me the same sensations of victory achieved that | 
experienced on that day in April 1879, when hanging on my rope 
adown the face of the old bastion at Gibraltar I first set eyes 
on those blue eggs. 
The Black Wheatear (Saxzcola leucura), although at times very 
much in evidence, is like all the Wheatears a master at the art of 
skulking and keeping out of sight. The male is a handsome fellow, 
jetty black with a very conspicuous white patch above the tail 
whence his popular name of £/¢ Sacristan,; in the female the 
black plumage is replaced by a more sober brown. In many 
of their habits they resemble the Blue Rock Thrush, and they 
occupy identically the same terrain, nesting in caverns often at 
the very summit of the lower sierras. 
My quest of this bird’s nest was even more prolonged and 
difficult than the quest of the Blue Rock Thrush’s, nor was it 
marked with the same success, for to this day I have never yet 
found a nest with the full complement of fresh eggs. 
In March 1875 I watched a pair in the Europa ravines and at 
4S) 
