THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN. 87 



are soft moss and lichens, wool, a little grass, and a mass of small feathers by 

 way of lining.* The eggs are of a yellowish-white, very closely spotted or clouded 

 with pale rust-colour, and vary in number from six or seven to ten or more ; I 

 once found twelve in a nest." 



A nest in my collection, taken from the undersurface of a yew-branch and 

 interlaced in the terminal feathery leaves, is formed almost entirely of moss, com- 

 pacted with spiders' silk and one or two small feathers ; the lining appears to 

 consist wholly of small soft feathers. Some eggs which I have seen, were creamy 

 white ; others, densely and minutely dusted all over with rusty-reddish ; others 

 again, with a deeper rust red zone, or terminal nebula, at the larger extremity. 



The song of the Gold-crest is short, low, but pleasing ; though its call-notes 

 are thin and almost as shrill as the notes of a bat. Dixon in describing the song 

 calls it eulogistically " a few notes of matchless melody." 



This tiny bird haunts woods, shrubberies, plantations of fir, larch and other 

 conifers, yew-trees in churchyards and cemeteries, copses, orchards and gardens. 

 In its habits it greatly resembles the Tits, dropping from spray to twig, turning, 

 twisting, closely examining every inch of its swaying perch for insect prey, and 

 incessantly uttering its high piercing whistle ; then, gliding rapidly from the end 

 of some feathery spray, it passes on to another tree and recommences its acrobatic 

 performances. Like the Tits also, this little bird is wonderfully confiding: one 

 autumn whilst standing on a balcony leading by steps into the garden of the house 

 which I then inhabited, I heard the shrill note of this species just above my head 

 and looking upwards saw a pair of Gold-crests clambering about over a jasmine 

 which I had trained to cover a wire arch above the doorway ; they appeared to be 

 quite indifferent to my presence not a foot below them. 



Stevenson, in his "Birds of Norfolk" after speaking of the well ascertained 

 fact that thousands of these tiny birds in the autumn come to swell the numbers 

 of our residents, observes : " Perhaps the most striking instance, however, of the 

 migration of the Gold- crest, in large numbers, to our eastern coast, was witnessed 

 by Captain L,onge, of Great Yarmouth, on the morning of the 2nd of November, 1862. 

 In a letter to myself at the time, he says ' As I was walking to Hemsby, about 

 7-30 when it was just daylight, about half a mile out of Yarmouth, on the Caister 

 road, my attention was attracted to a small bush overhanging the marsh dyke, 



* Mr. A. T. Mitchell, has drawn attention to the fact that, in some parts of Ireland, the Gold-crest "builds 

 commonly against the sides of ivy-covered trees. The nest is not suspended under a branch of fir, as I have 

 found it in England, and the nests here are badly and loosely put together." Mr. J. Trumbull states that of 

 seventeen nests of the Gold-crest found in Co. Dublin, only four were placed beneath the surface of a branch. 

 Mr. H. S. Davenport, has found half a dozen nests of the Gold-crest "placed against the sides of ivy-clad trees." 

 The Rev. H. A. Macpherson has also pointed out that the Gold-crest occasionally builds its nest in the middle 

 of a furze-bush (Cf. Zool. 1895. pp. 385, 431, 448.) 



