18 BIRDS sg “ha PLATA 
approached all the birds break out into a chorus of 
alarm, with rattling notes so annoyingly loud and 
sustained that the intruder, be it man or beast, is 
generally glad to hurry out of ear-shot. As the 
breeding-season approaches they are heard, probably 
the males, to utter a variety of soft low chattering 
notes, sounding sometimes like a person laughing 
and crying together: the flock then breaks up into 
pairs, the birds becoming silent and very circum- 
spect in their movements. The nest is usually built 
in a thorn-tree, of rather large sticks, a rough large 
structure, the inside often lined with green leaves 
plucked from the trees. The eggs are large for the 
bird, and usually six or seven in number; but the 
number varies greatly, and I have known one bird 
lay as many as fourteen. They are elliptical in form 
and beautiful beyond comparison, being of an ex- 
quisite turquoise-blue, the whole shell roughly 
spattered with white. The white spots are composed 
of a soft calcareous substance, apparently deposited 
on the surface of the shell after its complete forma- 
tion: they are raised, and look like snow-flakes, and 
when the egg is fresh-laid may be easily washed off 
with cold water, and are so extremely delicate that 
their purity is lost on the egg being taken into the 
hand. The young birds hatched from these lovely 
eges are proverbial for their ugliness, Pichon de 
Urraca being a term of contempt commonly applied 
to a person remarkable for want of comeliness. They 
are as unclean as they are ugly, so that the nest, 
usually containing six or seven young, is unpleasant 
