52 BRITISH BIRDS, THEIR EGGS AND NESTS. 



various-shaded lichens on the surface, and lined with wool and 

 hair and feathers, the last two being the finishing substances. I 

 never knew more than five eggs to be laid, oftener four, of a 

 peculiar winey-red dun, spotted and streaked and most near the 

 large end with a rich, dark Sienna brown. The eggs in their 

 comeliness befit the nest, and the nest is worthy of the bird. The 

 female is, however, the principal, if not the sole, architect and 

 builder. Fig. 5, plate IV. 



98. MOUNTAIN FINCH-(*>%i/& montifringilld). 



Brambling, Mountain Finch, Bramble Finch, Lulean Finch. 

 Only a winter visitor to our shores, but still pretty generally 

 diffused throughout the kingdom at that season, though never 

 perhaps, strictly speaking, any thing like a common bird any 

 where. 



99. TREE SPARROW (P<m*/- montanus). 



Mountain Sparrow. This species has undoubtedly been long 

 and continually confounded with the Common or House Sparrow . 

 And even yet it has not been satisfactorily proved to have occurred 

 in much more than half a dozen counties in England. Further 

 observation may do more yet in identifying the Tree Sparrow and 

 defining its localities. It nests in holes in pollard or other trees, 

 or in thatch, in company with other Sparrows of the common 

 species, but in this case always in holes entered from the outside, 

 not from the inside of the roof of the building. Sometimes it has 

 been ascertained to breed in nests made within deserted nests of a 

 Magpie, or some such bird. The nest, like that of the Common 

 Sparrow, is formed of dry grass or nay, or fine straw, and abun- 

 dantly lined with feathers of all sorts. The eggs, four or five in 

 general, are distinctly less than those of the House Sparrow, and 

 with more decided brown in the markings on the ground-colour 

 of soiled white. Fig. 6, plate 



100. HOUSE SPARROW (Passer Domesticns). 

 Sparrow, Common Sparrow. He may well be called the 

 Common Sparrow, for we find him alike in the town and the 

 country, in the field and in the garden, by the road-side hovel or 

 in the neighbourhood of the great mansion. And whether he be 

 sooty and black with the smoke of mid-London, or with his colours 

 pure and unsmirked and bright as in the clear breezy village, he 

 is still always the same pert, impudent creature, whose name has 

 passed almost into a proverb for bold familiarity. Ubiquitous as 

 he is by habit and system, his nest is found in sites almost as 

 various and as numerous as the places of his residence, under 

 the tiles or eaves of buildings, in the thatch-edges of a barn, h 



