BLACKCAP. 419 



by hopping from branch to branch to a more secluded situa- 

 tion. It is cautious also in selecting the spot for its nest, 

 the building of which is not begun till the expanding foliage 

 promises sufficient security. The nest is usually fixed in a 

 bush from two to five feet from the ground, and is constructed 

 of bents and dried herbage, with a lining of fine fibrous 

 roots and hair. The eggs, five or six in number, differ much 

 in colour, presenting especially two very different forms. 

 The more common kind, at least in some localities, is suf- 

 fused with light yellowish-brown, clouded or marbled with a 

 darker shade, upon which are imposed circular spots of deep 

 brown, but their edges are indistinct and often fade into the 

 surrounding colour. The other variety, which in some 

 places is most numerous, is of a light red or pale crimson 

 hue, similarly marbled and marked with darker shades of 

 red, and often having irregular blotches of a deep reddish- 

 brown. Occasionally perfectly white specimens may be 

 found, the result probably of some physical imperfection of 

 the parent. Some eggs also, which may be referred to the 

 variety first described, are hardly to be distinguished from 

 those of the Garden- Warbler. They measure from '84 to 

 71 by from -69 to *54 in. 



The Blackcap is hardly inferior to any British bird in the 

 compass of its song. It was, and justly, a great favourite 

 with White of Selborne. " They are delicate songsters," he 

 writes of birds of this species, and, in another passage, he 

 says that its tones always brought to his mind Shakespear's 

 lines : 



' ' And tune his merry note 

 Unto the wild bird's throat." As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 7. 



While again he has correctly described the cock as having 

 " a full, sweet, deep, loud, and wild pipe ; yet that strain," he 

 adds, "is of short continuance and his motions are desul- 

 tory ; but when that bird sits calmly and engages in song 

 in earnest, he pours forth very sweet, but inward melody, 

 and expresses great variety of soft and gentle modulations, 

 superior perhaps to those of any of our Warblers, the Night- 

 ingale excepted." Many as are the writers who have since 



