Ring Ouzels' Nests 181 



perhaps, by man himself. For the information of young 

 people it may likewise be stated that calcium, although one 

 of the most common elements in our earth's composition, 

 and the metallic basis of all lime, can never be found 

 in nature, in its simple or unalloyed state. After having 

 been laboriously collected by the chemist, it at once 

 combines with oxygen and disappears again, on being 

 brought into contact with the atmosphere. In other words, 

 it " evaporates," and it is chiefly in the form of lime (the 

 oxide of calcium) that we become acquainted with it. 



Out on the moor, birds were numerous, and five or six 

 nests of the Ring Ouzel, each containing eggs, were 

 discovered. Three of these were amongst heather on the 

 bank formed by the cutting of the rough cart road through 

 the peat and stones : in just such situations, one would have 

 supposed, as were most likely to be discovered by children 

 on their way to and from school, yet from two of them 

 broods were eventually safely brought off. In each case the 

 female betrayed her nest by flying from it at our approach. 

 It is very curious why Ring Ouzels, and some other birds, 

 will persist in making their nests alongside a road, even 

 though other sites quite as good to human eyes may 

 abound further from the paths of man. A good many 

 Blackbirds and Thrushes, particularly the former, also 

 breed about the lower margins of the moors ; but their 

 nests, when not in a bush, are more generally at a distance 

 from the more frequented tracks. Can it be that their 

 greater experience of man has taught them that children 

 are not always to be trusted, while the migratory Ring 

 Ouzel has not yet learned that lesson ? On the banks 

 of a stream they nest freely, building on a heathery or 

 grassy ledge, just as a Ring Ouzel would do. A yet more 

 favoured site is in a crevice in some of the many dry-stone 

 walls dividing the fields from the moors, or in the bank 

 often associated with them. One Ring Ouzel's nest was 

 found in such a wall to-day ; but, as a rule, they are not 



story, that feather and dirt-feeding, and parasitic insects and spiders, should 

 be the first inhabitants of newly formed oceanic land." -Journal of Researches 

 during the Voyage of the "Beagle" 



