TURDUS MUSICUS. 253 



at the Priory. It was so dark I could not see it, but on 

 returning at eight o'clock it still sang, and I saw it. Being 

 mild, a nest with four eggs was got on the 19th of January. 

 They build in March, the first brood flies in May, the second in 

 July, which I noted in 1890 at Abbey Park. Having occasion 

 to be there daily during alterations, I also noted that the old 

 birds, as they sat on their eggs in the shrubbery, turned their 

 heads to the sun — from east to west — as if they worshipped the 

 eye of day. The nest is usually of grass, roots, and moss 

 outside, and plastered inside with clay, mixed with bits of 

 straw or rotten wood, sometimes so water-tight as to make 

 incubation abortive in rainy seasons. It is found in all situa- 

 tions, from a hollow scraped out amongst grass to the top of a 

 dyke, or between the iron teeth of a harrow in a shed ; some- 

 times high up on trees, but usually in a hedge, a holly, or a 

 young tree. On the 17th of April 1856, I got a nest with five 

 eggs in the fork of a larch fir at Denbrae, fourteen feet from the 

 ground. I got another only three feet up in a wall tree in a 

 garden the same day ; and to show they are as various in their 

 materials as in their situations, the outside of the first was con- 

 structed entirely of fine green moss, the other entirely of dried 

 weeds — one weed had five stems 1 2 inches long, the inside 4 by 

 2 J inches, lined with mud, cows' droppings, and bits of rotten 

 wood — the bits of wood forming a rough and jagged lining. 

 They lay five of those well-known blue-green eggs, spotted 

 with black, so often seen blown and hung on a string, heedless 

 of the little songsters they had contained, and which might 

 have taken part in the harmony of Nature, reminding me of 

 Tannahill's feeling words, written in his favourite bosky dell on 

 the braes of Gleniffer — 



" Awa' you thochtless murdering gang 

 That tak' the nestlings ere they flee, 

 They'll sing to you a canty sang, 

 Then, O, in mercy let them be." 



Wood says — 



"A pair had five nests in one season (one of which was destroyed), and 

 reared seventeen young ones. The female was so tame that she permitted 

 herself to be fed on her eggs. I have stroked the head of a mavis on her 

 eggs, and know an instance of a male which took a fancy to a man, and 

 persisted in following him about, sit on his shoulders, and sing with the 

 greatest enthusiasm, and accompanied his protector into the outhouses. 

 By degrees it grew accustomed to others. It had a strange predilection 

 for steam, and was fond of perching on the edge of washing tubs, and would 

 sing there though so enveloped in the vapour as to be hardly visible." 



How different from the ill-used missel thrush, which was so 



