516 PASSERIFORMES CHAP. 
sings prettily. The typical Turdine nest is a massive cup of grass, 
cemented with mud and inlaid with finer herbage; but other 
materials are constantly added, while mud, dung, or rotten wood 
constitutes the lining in the case of the Song-Thrush, and occa- 
sionally elsewhere. It is usually placed in trees or bushes, but 
not infrequently in cavities in trunks, walls or rocks, and some- 
times on the ground in heather, banks, and so forth. The eggs may 
be greenish or bluish with reddish-brown or purplish spots and 
streaks, or glossy blue with or without black or brown markings ; 
Rock-Thrushes have them heght blue with faint stains, or pinkish 
with rusty freckles, Zurnagra whitish with black-brown spots. 
As regards the Saxicoline and Ruticilline forms attention should 
be drawn to the jerky, flitting flight, the “chacking” alarm-note and 
the rarer song of our Wheatear, the similar habits of our Stonechat 
and Whinchat, not to mention other allied forms; as well as to the 
pleasant notes of Redstarts, Redbreasts, Blue-throats, and Hedge- 
sparrows, and the common habits of hopping, flirting the tail, and 
drooping the wings. The nests of Chats consist of grass and moss, 
often lined with hair, feathers, or fur, and are usually placed in 
holes of various descriptions, or in rough herbage; the four to 
seven blue, greenish, or even whitish eggs being spotted or zoned 
with rufous, except in a few instances, such as our Wheatear, 
where markings are rare. Deserts and stony or furzy flats are 
favourite haunts. Petroeca adds bark, fibres, cobwebs, or lichens, 
and chooses sites in forks, or holes in trees and walls; the greenish 
or buffish eggs being marked with purplish, brown and grey. 
Cyanecula and Nemura select hollows in marshy spots, building 
with moss, grass, and leaves, hke Robins; but the former, instead 
of reddish-white eggs with rufous spots, has them olive-coloured 
or dull greenish with faint rusty markings, as have the Nightingales, 
which place their fabric of oak or beech leaves on the ground or in 
low shrubs. Copsychus, Cossypha, Catharus,and Thamnobia nest as 
Robins do, in holes in banks, trees, or walls, and have similar eggs ; 
Redstarts deposit five or six, which are hght blue or white and very 
rarely spotted, in a structure of grass, moss, roots, hair, and feathers, 
placed in cavities of trees or masonry; Zarsiger and Notodela 
prefer hollows in banks and rocks, and lay blue and salmon-pink 
eggs respectively. Hodgsonius and Larvivora also have them blue. 
Chimarrhornis and Rhyacornis nidificate like Redstarts, but their 
egos are greenish-white with rufous or yellowish spots; the shy 
