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In Europe, its nidification is well known. Mr. Yarrell says, 
“The nest is placed on the ground; the materials collected to 
form it are but few, consisting of small sticks and coarse grass ; 
the eggs are four or five in number, white or of a pale skimmed 
milk blue, one inch eight lines long, (1°67) against one inch four 
lines (1°33) in breadth. The male sits occasionally during the 
period of incubation, and has been shot on the nest. The 
young are hatched early in June, and are, at first, covered with 
white down.” 
- Mr. Hewitson says that in England, it breeds chiefly in mar- 
shy districts, and that the nest, when situated in low lands, is 
formed of so large a quantity of flags, sedge, and reed, as to raise 
it eighteen inches or two feet above the surface, so as to protect 
the young and eggs against sudden floods. Sir William Jar- 
dine tells us, that in a country possessing a considerable propor- 
tion of plain and mountain, they always retire at the commence- 
ment of the breeding season, to the wildest hills, and that 
or five, broad, transverse, bars of grey, or greyish brown. ‘The lateral tail 
feathers are similar but more broadly tipped with white, and with the grey or 
brownish grey bars changing generally as the feathers recede from the centre, 
into more or less clear, rufous, white, and the external feathers of all being 
often much tinged with rufous on their external webs towards their bases, 
and the brown inter-spaces being generally darker and purer on their 
inner webs. The lower part of the neck and breast is a mixture of rufous, and 
yellowish white, each feather with a broad, central, brown, or rufous brown, 
stripe; the shades of colour in the lower parts varying much in different 
individuals, The abdomen, vent, and lower tail coverts, yellowish white 
with brown shafts, anda more or less conspicuous ovate, rufous brown spot at 
the tips; the sides and flanks, are rufousor rufous brown with large white 
or fulvous white, double spots or imperfect bars; the tibial plumes hanging 
down over the tarsus, are similar to the lower tail coverts. The lesser wing- 
coverts, are more or less tipped with pale rufous fawn; many ofthe Indian 
ones, are broadly but imperfectly barred with the same colour; and many of 
the exterior scapulars have one or two large roundish spots of fulvous white 
on the outer webs, not very visible until the over-laying feathers are lifted. 
The quills are a somewhat pale umber brown, more or less tinged with 
grey, on the outer webs, below the emarginations, in the first few quills, 
and white or rufous white on the inner webs above the notches, and with 
from three to five dark brown, transverse, irregular bars on the inner webs, 
traces of which are visible on the outer webs also. 
Young.—The young resemble the female pretty closely, but have the 
irides brown, and the colours more marked, the brown being deeper, and 
the rufous of the head and neck brighter; the upper tail coverts have a red- 
dish brown, linear, lanceolate, central streak, and the tail banded with rufous. 
The males do not commence to assume their distinctive plumage until the 
autumn of the second year, and in its transition stage according to Montague, 
the plumage of the female, remains about the neck, the smaller coverts of 
the wings, the thighs and part of the abdomen intermixed with the male 
plumage, after the change has been elsewhere effected. 
