MISSEL THRUSH. 43 



frequently with grass alone; sometimes the outside is 

 partly covered with lichens and mosses, the former 

 taken from or resembling those on the tree itself, to 

 which they consequently give the fabric verisimilitude. 

 The width is about four inches and a half, the depth 

 two and three fourths, and the thickness of the sides 

 an inch and three quarters. Mr. Hewitson, mentions 

 one nest of which the foundation was of mud, strongly 

 cemented to, and nearly encircling the branches between 

 which it was fixed. This material appears to be occa- 

 sionally used a little with the lining. It is often placed 

 in very exposed situations in the hollow caused by the 

 divergence of the branches from the trunk, at a height 

 of ten or fifteen feet from the ground, but nevertheless 

 the erection of it has often not been observed until 

 after it has been fully completed. In 1848 one was 

 taken on a high bough of a large elm, at Swanscombe, 

 in Kent, as Mr. M. C. Cooke has informed me; others 

 have been known near the summit of a tree, and 

 others so low down as to be able to be looked into 

 from the ground. Shy, too, as the bird is at other 

 times, in its nidification it is not deterred from any 

 appropriate situation by the near propinquity of a house, 

 even where persons are constantly passing and repassing. 

 This has been noticed in repeated instances, and has 

 occurred close to my own former residence of Nafiferton 

 Vicarage, not more than ten or twelve feet from the 

 ground, within a dozen yards of the house, and with 

 hardly any attempt at concealment. The same tree will 

 be often returned to year after year, if the birds be 

 undisturbed, and Frederick Bond, Esq., of Kingsbury, 

 has known the same nest used twice in the same season. 

 They will suffer other species to build near them, so 

 close as within a foot distance, and that without any 



