GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN. 135 



owing to the system, of late years extensively adopted, 

 of planting larch, spruce, and other firs, which form 

 their usual resort. Scarcely less beautiful also than 

 its tiny architects is the marvellously constructed nest of 

 this species, so ingeniously suspended for the most part 

 from the under side of a fir-branch, with the smaller 

 twigs and foliage overhanging and protecting the 

 entrance, the whole presenting a little ball of moss, 

 lined with the softest feathers. That these little fairy- 

 like creatures risk the perils of a sea- voyage in autumn, 

 and leaving more northern countries, swell the numbers 

 of our usual residents, has been ascertained of late years 

 beyond a doubt, from their frequent appearance on the 

 coast at such seasons in an exhausted state, and the fact 

 of specimens being picked up dead at the foot of our 

 lighthouses, having flown, with other nocturnal migrants, 

 against the windows at night, dazzled and attracted 

 by the glare of the lamps. I have also recently met 

 with a communication by Mr. Blyth to the " Field 

 Naturalist" for 1833* (p. 467), containing a record 

 of the Golden-crested Wren, having been actually 

 observed at sea on its southward migration. The 

 observer, in this instance, was returning from Aber- 

 deen, on board a trading smack, and states that, f e When 

 off Whitby, about fourteen miles from land, on the 

 7th of October, a flock of gold-crests settled on the 

 ship's tackle; the little creatures, being much exhausted, 

 suffered themselves to be taken with the hand; as did 

 also a solitary chiffchaff, which, together with nine 

 gold-crests, it was attempted to bring alive to London ; 

 but they all died on the passage." Chaffinches (females), 

 song-thrushes, fieldfares, starlings, tree-pipits, tree- 

 sparrows, a nightjar, and a woodcock, are also men- 



* I have before had occasion to allude to this most interesting 

 paper in my remarks on the Redbreast, at p. 93 of the present work. 



