43 



THRUSH. 



THROSTLE. SONG THRUSH. COMMON THRUSH. MAVIS. 

 PLATE CI. 



Turdus musicus, PEXXAXT. MOXTAQU. 



Merula mwica, SELBT. 



XIDIFICATIOX commences the latter end of March, and the eggs are 

 deposited earlier or later in April, though sometimes not until May, 

 according to the season. Nests have been known to have been begun 

 even so early as the middle of February, but frost caused them to be 

 deserted. The birds are correspondingly able to fly from the latter end 

 of April to the middle of June, and have been known to have been 

 hatched even on the last day of March. Mrs. Harriet Murchison, of 

 Bicester, Oxfordshire, has forwarded me a specimen of a nest with 

 four eggs, which was found at that place on the 6th. of January, 

 1853. A second brood is generally reared in the season, and if one 

 set of eggs is destroyed, a second is produced in a fortnight, or even 

 a third if need be. The female is extremely attentive to her charge, 

 and will sit on the nest until quite closely approached, and will some- 

 times suffer herself to be taken sooner than forsake it. If you disturb 

 and alarm her, she will testify her anxiety by flying round you with 

 ruffled feathers and outspread tail, uttering a note of alarm, and violently 

 snapping the bill. If unmolested, both birds have been known to pick 

 up crumbs of bread thrown down to them, and to give them to their 

 young. 



The nest is composed of moss, small twigs, straws, leaves, roots, 

 stems of plants, and grass, compacted together with some tenacious 

 substance with tolerable ingenuity, and is lined with a congeries of clay 

 and decayed wood. It is placed in a hedge or thick bush of any kind 

 at a small height from the ground, and likewise at times on a rough 

 bank among moss, brambles, or shrubs, as also, where the country is 



