32 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 



taken from the familiar site of its nest, or from some of its habits 

 in taking food. It will return to the same post, after a short 

 excursion to seize an insect, ten or a dozen times in succession : 

 and it will build its nest on a wall, on the end of a rafter or 

 beam, on a rake-head, in a trained wall-tree in fact, in almost 

 every conceivable place. The nest varies in material and struc- 

 ture, almost as much as in its site. Moss, old and new, bents, 

 straws, twigs, hairs, feathers, all are used. It is an amusing 

 little bird, and pays many feeding visits to its young, as is the 

 case with all insect-feeding birds. The eggs are four or five in 

 number, of dull white, tinged with blue, and spotted with faint 

 red. It only visits us to breed here. Fig* 6, plate II. 



38. PIED FLYCATCHER (Muscicapa atricapilla.) 



Goldfinch. A rare bird in some localities, and not an abundant 

 one in any. The nest is loosely made of small roots, bents, grass, 

 moss, hair, or some such material, in a hole, usually in pollard 

 trees, or such as have decayed from natural causes, but some- 

 times also in a hole in a wall or other building. In it may be 

 found four to eight eggs of a uniform light blue colour. ig. 7, 



IIL-MEKlJLlDjE. 



39. COMMON DIPPER (Cinclas ar/vaticus.) 



Water-ouzel, Brook-ouzel, Water-crow, Water-piet, Bessy- 

 ducker I may as well own that I am a little bit, " fond " about 

 the Dipper. I dearly love to sec him and hear him in my ram- 

 bles by our mountain becks. So lively, cheery, and jolly, even 

 in the cold winter day, when the mere look o! the chilly, shivering 

 stream makes one feel goose-skinny. Then; he, sits at the water 

 edge, and sings like a Robin a little tipsy, and ihen in he tum- 

 bles, in a rollicking sort of way, as you become a little too 

 inquisitive, and emerging a few yards further down, takes wing, 

 and darts off with his Kingfisher-like flight. One nest some 

 lads belonging to my family found here, was a feather-bed sort of 

 structure of moss and a few feathers, filling up a six-inch square 

 hole in the masonry of a bridge in which one of the scaffold- 

 rafters of the workmen had been inserted, there being a small, 

 round hole left in the exposed side for exit and ingress. Others 

 may bo seen in cavities in a rock by the water-side ; and one I 

 heard of, if my memory is correct, in Berwickshire, was built 

 amid the stone-work of a water-lead for conducting the \va.ste 

 water away from a mill, and in such a position that the \va er in 

 its fall projected itself beyond the nest, and formed a kind of arch 

 above it. 'The old birds in going into or leaving their nest had 

 actually to pass in either from the side or through tho interstices 



