5l6 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 ; 

 Kock-Thrushes have them light blue with faint stains, or pinkish 

 with rusty freckles, Turnagra whitish with black-brown spots. 



As regards the Saxicoline and Euticilline 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 Eedstarts, Eedbreasts, 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 Ijuffish eggs being marked with purplish, brown and grey. 

 Cyanecida and Nemura select hollows in marshy spots, building 

 with moss, grass, and leaves, like Eobins ; 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 Thavinolia nest as 

 Eobins do, in holes in banks, trees, or walls, and have similar eggs ; 

 Eedstarts deposit five or six, wdiich are light blue or white and very 

 rarely spotted, in a structure of grass, moss, roots, hair, and feathers, 

 placed in cavities of trees or masonry ; Tarsiger and Notodela 

 prefer hollows in banks and rocks, and lay blue and salmon-pink 

 eggs respectively. Hodgsonius and Larvivora also have thean blue. 

 Chimarrhornis and Bhyacornis nidificate like Eedstarts, but their 

 eggs are greenish-white with rufous or yellowish spots ; the shy 



