24 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



operation for some minutes, he gradually relaxed 

 his hold, and half fluttering, half tumbling through 

 the horizontal branches of the tree beneath me, 

 at last reached the ground in safety. 



I had now leisure to examine the nest, the 

 lower and external portions of which were com- 

 posed of sticks from the larch and fir, the mate- 

 rials becoming finer towards the interior, which 

 was lined throughout with very thin birch twigs, 

 closely matted together. It was much wider 

 than that of the rook, and shallower in propor- 

 tion, being, as nearly as I could guess, about four 

 feet in diameter, and some of those in the neigh- 

 bouring trees, when viewed from beneath, seemed 

 even larger than this. 



The two dead birds appeared to have perished 

 about a week before, probably owing to the un- 

 usual severity of the weather during the past 

 month. Their decomposing bodies did not seem 

 to have incommoded the old birds, as they might 

 easily have removed the annoyance, if inclined to 

 do so, by throwing them out of the shallow nest, 

 in the interior of which I found nothing else, ex- 

 cept the back-bones of two or three fish, which 

 might have originally weighed half a pound each. 



My operations 1 having for the present disturbed 

 the elder members of the heronry, who seemed 

 unwilling to return to the trees while I remained 



