57 



KEDBBEAST. 



ROBIN. ROBIX REDBREAST. RUDDOCK. ROBINET. 



PLATE CYIII. 



Sylvia rubecula, PEirffAHT. FLEMING. 



Jtfotacilla rubecula, MONTAGU. BEWICK. 



Erythaca rubecula, SELBT. GOULD. 



NIDIPICATION commences very early in the spring, and the eggs are 

 usually laid about the beginning of April; but young birds have often 

 been found in the nest by the end of March. In backward seasons 

 they are usually later. Mr. Macgillivray mentions one seen on the 9th. 

 of May, 1831, and another on the 2nd. of June, 1837, which he believed 

 to be the first brood of that year. A Robin's nest containing several 

 G S } was taken near York the first week in February, 1844, there 

 beiug snow on the ground at the time, and the temperature ranging 

 from 30 to 23 Fahrenheit; another, which had five eggs, was found 

 at Moreton in the Marsh, in the second week of January, 1848; another, 

 with the like number of eggs, in a garden at Wheldrake, near York, 

 the 10th. of the same month; and one, also with eggs, near Belfast 

 on the 20th. of February, 1846. A nest with two eggs, on which the 

 hen bird was sitting, was found near the end of November, 1851, at 

 Gribton, Dumfriesshire, the seat of Francis Maxwell, Esq. 



The nest of the Robin, which is built of fine stalks, moss, dried 

 leaves, and grass, and lined with hair and wool, with sometimes a few 

 feathers, is generally placed on a bank under the shelter of a bush, or 

 sometimes in a bush itself, at a low height from the ground, and 

 occasionally in a hole in a wall covered with ivy, a crevice in a rock, 

 among fern and tangled roots the entrance perhaps being through 

 some very narrow aperture, or an ivy-clad tree. It measures about five 



VOL. II. I 



