64 REDSTART. 



twelve feet of the nest. The same situation, if the birds have been 

 undisturbed, is frequently resorted to from year to year. One pair have 

 been known to revisit the same garden for sixteen seasons in succession: 

 a pair resorted for four successive years to the ventilator of a stable. 

 The female is sedulously devoted to her eggs or young, and will some- 

 times suffer herself to be touched before flying off from the nest; if, 

 however, they be molested she will forsake it: both birds indeed are 

 most assiduous in their attentions to their brood, one or other of them 

 being to be seen in constant motion, conveying food to them, or retiring 

 in search of it. In one instance, the male bird having been killed while 

 the hen was sitting, another partner joined the widow, and became 

 foster-father to the orphaned family/ 



The following was in the 'Ipswich Journal' of June llth., 1853: 

 'In the gardens at Holbrook House, the residence of Miss Reade, a 

 little bird called the Redtail has built a nest in an inverted flower-pot, 

 six and a half inches deep, and seven inches wide at the top. The 

 hole in the bottom, or rather the top as the pot stands, is one and a 

 half inches over, and through this the little bird has carried the whole 

 of the materials for its nest, which is formed on the side of the pot. 

 Six eggs were laid, from which five young ones were hatched; and 

 our correspondent has promised to give us the particulars as to their 

 mode of escape at some future time. The pot stands by the side of a 

 gravel walk, at a spot where the family and gardener are continually 

 passing/ 



The eggs, which are of a uniform light greenish blue colour, are 

 generally from four to six or seven in number, but occasionally so many 

 as eight have been found. They much resemble those of the Dunnock, 

 but are of a paler colour, and a more slender and delicate form, as 

 well as considerably smaller. 



