THE MISSEL-THRUSH. 77 



pens to be a colony near, is the jack-daw, which 

 gains by perseverance what the others fail to ob- 

 tain by force. We have seen four or five of these 

 birds assail the parent thrushes, and while some 

 made the attack, the others deliberately plundered 

 the nest. During the contest, the cries of the 

 thrushes are loud and incessant, and at once tell 

 that some depredator is near. The nest is placed 

 almost always in the cleft of a tree, or close to the 

 bole ; at times we have seen it near the summit, 

 at other times, placed so low that we could look 

 into it from the ground, and it is very frequently 

 built on the fruit trees of a garden or orchard. 

 The foundation of the nest is laid with slender 

 twigs, or stalks of grass, and when the fabric is 

 reared, the outside is patched over with pieces of 

 lichen, apparently generally taken from the tree 

 on which it is built, certainly never of a very 

 opposite character from those which grow around, 

 and thus they serve as an excellent blind against 

 detection. The eggs are from four to six in num- 

 ber, of a green or blueish white, spotted and 

 blotched with reddish brown. When the duties 

 of incubation are concluded, the broods with the 

 old birds keep together, and towards the com- 

 mencement of winter, sometimes collect in flocks 

 of from twenty to thirty, feeding on the wild ber- 

 ries which are at this time nearly ripe. They 

 soon, however, seem to disperse again, and during 

 the whole of the winter may be seen in parties of 

 five or six, or in pairs, feeding sometimes on the 

 wild fruits, and at others selecting the low mea- 



