BIRD ADVENTURERS 221 



to sit and stuff until they get so fat that they 

 die in fits. However, there is not so much 

 danger of this when they are in an aviary as 

 there is when they are kept in cages, and some 

 fanciers who have aviaries have even got these 

 beautiful birds to lay and hatch their eggs 

 during the last few years, though no young ones 

 have been reared so far. But even getting 

 eggs from waxwings would have been a great 

 triumph half a century ago, for then no one 

 knew what they were like, as no waxwings 

 had ever been found nesting. However, the 

 great egg - collector Mr. Wolley went to the 

 trouble of spending a whole winter in Lap- 

 land, in the hope of taking these eggs in the 

 spring, and he was not disappointed. It 

 turned out that the eggs and nest were nothing 

 so very remarkable, as one might have ex- 

 pected from the old birds being so different 

 from other birds in Europe ; the nest is simply 

 an ordinary cup-shaped one made in a tree, 

 with a foundation of twigs and a lining of 

 lichen, and the eggs are not unlike an ordinary 

 thrush's eggs, but not so pretty, for the 

 ground-colour is only bluish-grey instead of 

 bright blue. Still, it was considered a great 



