98 FIELD-STUDIES OF RARER BIRDS 



selected is usually thoroughly exposed, so com- 

 manding an uninterrupted view all round ; but 

 now and then a nest is found in a narrow gorge or 

 dingle whose precipitous sides are only a matter 

 of yards apart. A westerly aspect is preferred to 

 all others. Although I have climbed to a good 

 many mountain-nests without tackle, some indeed 

 having been in quite ridiculous places, the average 

 home of the Raven to reach requires a rope. Some 

 examples are in ghastly spots. The nest itself is 

 a large, rough concern of sticks, branchlets, twigs 

 (those of the mountain ash and oak being general 

 favourites) and heather (in some treeless districts, 

 heather alone is used), somewhat loosely inter- 

 laced, but further fortified by great lumps of moist 

 turf or peat, which in time produce a species of 

 cement (though the Raven may hardly be said to 

 really plaster its home like the Magpie), copiously 

 and smoothly lined, first with moss, leaves, bark- 

 fibre, grass-tufts, and wood-rush (living and dead), 

 and then fur, hair of almost any kind in tufts, and 

 quantities of wool, some of which usually projects 

 over the rim of the nest, and often festoons its 

 exterior. Occasionally, a good deal of moss shows 

 up here and there in a finished but patchy lining 

 of these animal substances ; and often a few feathers 

 from the sitting bird become embedded in it. 



The size of the nest varies somewhat, not only 

 according to its site, but also according as to how 

 often it has been built upon and renovated 



