54 BLACKBIRD. 



ground has been recorded in the Zoologist, page 1023, 

 by W. W. Spicer, Esq. Mr. John H. Blundell, of 

 Luton, Bedfordshire, has written me word of his having 

 found the nest in one instance on the ground, in the 

 middle of a large plantation of oaks. It is often put 

 in a hedge, and is commonly built at a height of 

 three or four feet; also in a hole in a wall or rock. 

 In some instances it has been known, when placed in 

 or against the branch of a tree, to be in some degree 

 fastened to it by a twining and lacing of the larger 

 of the materials of which it is composed, and in one 

 case, the space between the branch of a tree, on which 

 it was placed, and a wall, was filled* up with straw 

 and hay. It is made of roots, small twigs, and stalks 

 of grass, with perhaps some lichens or fern, and is 

 covered on the inside with mud, and lined with finer 

 parts of the other materials and grass; it is sometimes 

 most admirably hidden in a hollow in a bank, so as 

 almost to baffle detection. It is at times placed on 

 the top of a fence or the summit of a wall. The same 

 situation is occasionally resorted to from year to year. 

 N. Rowe, Esq., of Worcester College, Oxford, writes 

 me word of a pair of Blackbirds which built their nest 

 in the same spot in a laurel tree that had been pre- 

 viously tenanted the same year by a pair of Green- 

 finches, who in their turn had succeeded a pair of 

 Thrushes. The female sits for thirteen days-. 



The eggs are commonly five in number, sometimes 

 four, and sometimes, though but rarely, six; they are 

 of a dull light blue or greenish brown colour, mottled 

 and spotted with pale reddish brown, the markings 

 being closer at the larger end, where they sometimes 

 form an obscure ring. Mr. Hewitson, in his 'Coloured 

 Illustrations of the Eggs of British Birds,' figures one 



