April 



song-thrush came before me at Millington in 

 Cheshire about the same time. The bird had built 

 its nest upon the stump of a broken tree over a 

 pond at the edge of a wood. The nest was built 

 about half a yard above the surface of the water. It 

 contained material sufficient for the construction of 

 four nests, and a large quantity had fallen into the 

 water ere the foundation could be laid. The bird 

 had then continued to erect the enormous column 

 of hay, as if, after choosing so exposed a situation 

 (although on the border of a wood), it sought to 

 thrust the object still more prominently upon public 

 notice. The thrush is a gentle, inoffensive bird, 

 but its best friends cannot claim consideration for it 

 on the score of sagacity. 



Allied to this strange fatuity, which seems to 

 possess the thrush family generally at nesting time 

 and not to exempt the missel-thrush, usually the 

 wariest of his tribe, and yet at such times equally 

 incautious is an eccentricity in the choice of a 

 nesting site amounting almost to insanity. As I 

 write, I know of two nests of the throstle placed in 

 the porches of houses, one on a low, open ledge 

 exposed to the view of every visitor. I have found 

 a nest slung in a whisp of straw at the side of a 

 brickstack. For two years successively a thrush 

 similarly slung its nests from two or three stalks of 

 dead bracken overhanging a peat ditch on Barton 

 Moss. I remember finding a nest full of squab 

 young thrushes on the top of a fence post on Chat 



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