200 SKETCHES OF BIRD LIFE. 



and in France we have often watched it searching 

 for them amongst horse -droppings on the high 

 roads, where we have also seen it dusting itself on 

 a warm day, after the manner of a Skylark. But 

 besides picking up a good deal of food from the 

 surface, it also probes beneath the soil, where the 

 nature of the ground admits of this, and secures 

 many a worm and lurking grub by means of its long 

 and slender-pointed bill. 



It builds in the hole of a tree, where the hen 

 bird sits on the eggs without interruption until they 

 are hatched, the male bringing her food and feeding 

 her from the outside of the hole. One peculiarity 

 about the nest is that it is often rendered quite 

 offensive by the quantity of horse-dung with which 

 it is partially composed. 



Lord Lilford, in narrating his experience of this 

 bird in Southern Spain, states that although, as a 

 rule, it prefers a hole in an old ash or willow tree 

 for nesting in, he has seen a nest on the ground 

 under a large stone, others in holes on the sunny 

 side of mud or brick walls, one in a fissure of lime- 

 stone rock, and another in a small cavern. 



The eggs, which are generally five or six in 



