THE THRUSH GENUS 369 



may be seen eighty feet above the ground, they are often so near 

 it as to be within easy reach of human hand or feline claw. They 

 are also found on the ground itself, but this is more particularly the 

 case in treeless districts like the tundras of Siberia. 



The habit of nesting on the ground or rocky ledges is common to 

 all our Thrushes in varying degrees. As might be expected it reaches 

 its highest development in the ring-ouzel, who, indeed, in its moorland 

 haunts finds trees and bushes few and far between. But the habit is 

 not exercised only in treeless districts. Blackbirds, and to a lesser 

 degree song-thrushes and mistle-thrushes, will build their nests upon 

 the ground in places where there is no lack of suitable sites in trees 

 and bushes. Sometimes the nest will be found at the foot of a tree, 

 sometimes, as in the case of the thrush whose nest is shown on 

 Plate xiv. (p. 328), in long grass, close to bushes where numbers of other 

 thrushes are at the same time brooding eggs or young. It has been 

 observed that many of the ground nests of blackbirds and thrushes are 

 the later ones, built towards the middle of May, and containing often 

 no more than three eggs, evidently second or even third attempts at 

 breeding. An inference suggested is that the birds have been driven 

 to build on the ground for the sake of greater concealment. In this 

 there is nothing inherently improbable. Birds will under pressure alter 

 their nesting habits. On the other hand, one would think that, where- 

 as in the earlier part of the season, before the leaf was out, ground 

 nests would be better concealed, they would, as the foliage grew thicker, 

 offer less advantages. Otherwise ground nests are sometimes very 

 conspicuous, as was the case with the one shown in the photograph on 

 Plate xiv., which was robbed while many in neighbouring bushes 

 escaped. 1 



A fact frequently noticed in the case of the mistle-thrush is the 

 presence near its nest, either in the same tree or an adjoining one, of 



1 See note by Dr. N. F. Ticehurst in British Birds, iv. p. 75. For instances of ground nests 

 of the niistle-tlirush, see the Zoologist, August 1803 (" in a tuit of bent-grass"); Field, 1872, vol. 

 xl. p. 559 ; 1873, vol. xli. pp. 130, 530. It frequently nests on rocky ledges near the coast. 



3B 



