128 CHIFF CHAFF. 



of earth. Mr. Henry Doubleday has found one at a height 

 of two feet from the ground, in some fern; and Mr. Hewitson 

 mentions another, which was built in some ivy against a 

 garden wall, at a like elevation. Occasionally the nest is 

 placed in a row of peas, or a bed of ground-growing wild 

 plants. 



The eggs, usually seven in number, are more than ordinarily 

 rounded at the larger end, and pointed at the smaller. They 

 are hatched in thirteen days: they do not vary much, and 

 are of a white ground colour, with very small dots and spots 

 of blackish red or purple brown, chiefly at the thicker end, 

 which they sometimes surround in the way of a zone or a 

 belt. Mr. Neville Wood saw a nest which contained five eggs 

 of the usual colour, and the sixth pure white. The shell is 

 very thin, and but little polished. The eggs are laid towards 

 the middle or end of May, and the young birds are fledged 

 about the middle of June: they quit the nest early. 



Incubation lasts thirteen days, and the male occasionally 

 relieves the female at her post. Two broods are sometimes 

 reared in the season. 



Male; weight, nearly three drachms; length, four inches 

 and a half; bill, dark brown, the edges of both and the lower 

 one at the base, pale yellowish red, the base beset with bristles; 

 there is a pale yellowish brown mark over the eye, more or 

 less obscure, and between the eye and the bill the space is 

 grey: a narrow circle of the former colour surrounds the eyes; 

 iris, dusky. Head, crown, neck on the back, and nape, greenish 

 ash-colour, or brownish olive, the green almost disappearing 

 in the building-season; chin, throat, and breast, pale dull 

 yellowish white, the yellow colour chiefly in indistinct streaks, 

 and also nearly disappearing in the building-time; back, 

 greenish ash-colour, or brownish olive, the edges of the feathers 

 paler than the remainder. 



The wings, which extend to the width of six inches, have 

 the first quill short, the second a quarter of an inch shorter 

 than the third, which is of the same length as the fifth, and 

 rather longer than the fourth, the former two being the 

 longest in the wing, and the seventh a little longer than the 

 second, which in some specimens does not exceed even the 

 eighth; the under surface of the wings is grey; greater and 

 lesser wing coverts, also greenish ash-colour or brownish olive, 

 duller in the summer; primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries, : 

 rather darker brown, the edges of the last-named rather i 



