368 GOLDEN-EVE 
nostril is covered by a single bristly feather directed forwards. 
The Golden-crested Wren is the smallest of British birds, its whole 
length being about 3 inches and a half, and its wing measuring 
only 2 inches from the carpal joint. Generally of an olive-green 
colour, the top of its head is bright yellow, deepening into orange, 
and bounded on either side by a black line, while the wing-coverts 
are dull black, and some of them tipped with white, forming a 
somewhat conspicuous bar. The cock has a pleasant but weak 
song. The nest is a beautiful object, thickly felted of the softest 
moss, wool, and spiders’ webs, lined with feathers, and usually built 
under and near the end of the branch of a yew, fir, or cedar, sup- 
ported by the interweaving of two or three laterally diverging and 
pendent twigs, and sheltered by the rest. The eggs are from six 
to ten in number, of a dull white sometimes finely freckled with 
reddish-brown. The species is particularly social, living for the 
most of the year in family-parties, and often joining bands of any 
species of Titmouse in a common search for food. Though to be 
met with in Britain at all seasons, the bird in autumn visits the 
east coast in enormous flocks, apparently emigrants from Scandi- 
navia, while htindreds perish in crossing the North Sea, where they 
are well known to the fishermen as ‘‘ Woodcock’s Pilots,” from 
their generally preceding by a few days the advent of those regular 
immigrants. A second and more local European species is the 
Fire-crested Wren, R. ignicapillus, easily recognizable by the 
black streak on each side of the head, before and behind the eye, 
and conspicuous white streak above it, as well as by the deeper 
colour of its crown. A third and fourth species, R. maderensis and 
LR. teneriffz, inhabit Madeira and the Canary Islands, being peculiar 
to each group respectively ; and examples from the Himalayas and 
Japan have been differentiated as £. himalayensis and Rh. japonicus. 
North America has two well-known species, £. satrapa, very like 
the European R. ignicapillus, and the Ruby-crowned Wren, £&. calen- 
dula, which is remarkable for a loud song that has been compared 
to that of a Canary-bird or a Sky-lark, and for having the character- 
istic nasal feather in a rudimentary or aborted condition.! 
GOLDEN-EYE, a name indiscriminately given in many parts 
of Britain to two very distinct species of Ducks, from the rich 
yellow colour of their irides. The commonest of them—the Anas 
fuligula of Linnzeus and Fuligula cristata of most modern ornitholo- 
1 Under the name of &. modestus, or ‘‘ Dalmatian Regulus” of some English 
authors, two very distinct species are now known to have been confounded, both 
belonging really to the group of W1LLow-Wrens, and having nothing to do 
with Regulus. One, which has occurred in Britain, is the Motacilla superciliosa 
of old or Phylloscopus superciliosus of modern authors, and is a native of northern 
Asia, visiting Europe nearly every year, and the other, also of Asiatic origin, is 
the Motacilla or Phylloscopus proregulus. 
