BLACKBIED. 205 



some instances it has been known, when placed in or against 

 the branch of a tree, to be in some degree fastened to it by 

 a twining and lacing of the larger of the materials of which 

 it is composed, and in one case, the space between the branch 

 of a tree, on which one was placed, and a wall, was filled 

 up with straw and hay. It is made of roots, small twigs, 

 and stalks of grass, with perhaps some lichens or fern, and 

 is covered on the inside with mud, and lined with finer parts 

 of the other materials arid grass; it is sometimes most admirably 

 hidden in a hollow in a bank, so as almost to baffle detection. 

 It is at times placed on the top of a fence or the summit 

 of a wall: the same situation is occasionally resorted to from 

 year to year. N. Howe, Esq., of Worcester College, Oxford, 

 writes me word of a pair of Blackbirds which built their nest 

 in the same spot in a laurel tree that had been previously 

 tenanted the same year by a pair of Greenfinches, who in 

 their turn had succeeded a pair of Thrushes. The female sits 

 for thirteen days. 



The eggs are commonly five in number, sometimes four, 

 and sometimes, though but rarely, six; they are of a dull 

 light blue or greenish brown colour, mottled and spotted with 

 pale reddish brown, the markings being closer at the larger 

 end, where they sometimes form an obscure ring. Mr. 

 Hewitson, in his 'Coloured Illustrations of the Eggs of 

 British Birds,' figures one elegantly covered over at the larger 

 end with minute reddish brown specks, and likewise, but less 

 thickly, over the remainder the green shewing through; and 

 a second curiously marbled with irregular dashes and specks 

 of reddish brown over the green colour. Another variety is 

 similar to the last, except that the ground colour is lighter, 

 and the spots smaller. Another, in his possession, clear 

 spotless light blue, with the whole of the larger end suffused 

 with reddish brown. J. B. Ellman, Esq., of Battel, relates 

 in the 'Zoologist,' page 2180, that he had an egg in which 

 the spots were at the smaller end. 



The Rev. Gr. Sowden, of Stainland, near Halifax, writes me 

 word that he has twice met with the variety of the egg 

 which resembles that of the Thrush, namely, in being of a 

 fine blue colour and without spots, and he has obligingly 

 forwarded two specimens of them to me. One of the nests 

 which contained them was on a ledge in a very high wall 

 in a quarry. N. Eowe, Esq. tells me that he has taken 

 similar ones of an uniform dull blue. Some of the eggs are 



