58 WHLffCHAT. 



pillars, worms, and small mollusca; also some say on berries. 

 The first-named are sometimes seized in the air, the bird 

 watching for them from its station on some bush or twig, 

 to which it returns after each successful sally. 



Its song is agreeable, sweet, and melodious, though desultory, 

 and is uttered from the top of some hedge or bush, or while 

 hovering in the air over it. One brought up from the nest 

 by Mr. Sweet, used to sing the whole day through, and 

 very often at night, imitating the notes of the Whitethroat, 

 Redstart, Willow Warbler, Missel Thrush, and Nightingale. 

 The ordinary note is a 'chack,' or 'chat;' also when alarmed, 

 a 'tick,' 'tick,' resembling the sound produced by striking 

 two pebbles together, and, says Macgillivray, a 'peep, tick, 

 tick, tick, tick;' each syllable repeated from one to six times, 

 but rarely so often, and accompanied by a slight upraising 

 of the wings, and a shake of the tail. 



The nest is placed in the lower part of a gorse bush, a 

 few inches above the ground, where the thorns and stalks are 

 dying off, so that the materials of the nest assimilate in 

 appearance to the situation in which it is placed, and it is 

 thus the rather screened from observation. More frequently 

 it is placed in the grass at the foot of it, and has been 

 known in a hedge adjoining a road. Where there are no 

 gorse bushes, it is placed in the rough grass in a pasture field, 

 or in a meadow. It is loosely built of stalks of grass and 

 moss, and is lined with finer portions of the former; a layer 

 of wool has been known between the two, and occasionally 

 some hair or leaves: it measures six inches across, and two 

 and a half internally. It is very carefully concealed, and 

 extremely difficult to find; the bird approaching it stealthily 

 by a labyrinthine track. 



The eggs are of a glossy bluish green colour, with some 

 minute specks, and sometimes, though very rarely, of dull 

 reddish brown; they are five or six in number, usually the 

 latter, very rarely seven. 



The young are hatched towards the end of May, and two 

 broods are produced in the season, the first being abroad from 

 the middle of June to the beginning of July, and the second 

 in August. 



Edwin Cottingham, Esq. has favoured me with a drawing 

 of the nest and eggs. 



Male; weight, about four drachms and a half; length, five 

 inches to five and a quarter; bill, polished black; a brown 



