THE SONG THRUSH. 39 



Having some years after mentioned the circumstance to a scientific friend in Edinburgh, I was 

 favoured with an assurance of the utter impracticability of the feat, which indeed is at first mention not 

 very credible, although one may easily satisfy himself that a whelk, thick as it is, is very easily broken 

 by knocking it smartly against a hard body. 



" The full song of this species is heard in April, May, and June, although, as I have already said, 

 it may be occasionally heard at any season. In March it pairs, and by the end of that month, or in 

 the beginning of the next, begins to construct its nest, which is placed in a thick bush of any kind, or 

 iu a hedge at a small height, or on a rough bank among shrubs or moss. In the unwooded parts of 

 the country it is found under shelter of a projecting stone or crag, in the crevice of a rock, or at the 

 root of a tuft of heath, or among the stunted willows on the rocky bank of a stream. It is composed 

 externally of slender twigs, roots, grass, and moss, and is lined with a thin layer of mud, cow-dung, or 

 rotten wood, neatly laid on, and between which and the eggs no other substance is interposed. The 

 diameter of the cavity is usually about four inches, its depth from two and a half to four. As a good 

 deal of wrangling has taken place on the subject of Thrushes' nests, I may be allowed to be somewhat 

 particular in this matter. Although the structure of the nest does not vary much, the materials are 

 very diversified. In a nest before me, which is very bulky, the exterior is formed of the long tough 

 roots of various plants, a twig of Rumex crispus or latifolius, another of the rasp, a clipping of box- 

 wood, a piece of pack-thread, numerous tufts of Poa annua, and Stellaria media, two or three mosses, 

 and some other substances. Within this is a more elaborate structure of fibrous roots, tufts of grasses, 

 straws, and some beech leaves, interwoven, and compacted with some tenacious substance. This inner 

 cup is lined or plastered with a very thin but firm coating of what seems to be horse-dung, on the 

 surface of which are spread numerous chips of straw and slender grasses, but certainly no decayed 

 wood, as some allege to be usually the case. This nest is in diameter three inches and a half, in depth 

 two and a half, its greatest diameter seven inches, and its greatest depth four and a half. This is the 

 nest of a civilised Thrush, it having been found in a hedge in the immediate vicinity of Modern 

 Athens. 



"On the 5th of May, 1836, I found in a honeysuckle bush in a wood between Haddington and 

 Gilford the nest of a Thrush, in which the bird was working at the time, completing its interior, in 

 which was a piece of wet rotten wood, quite soft and friable, which it was applying to the walls. 

 Another nest found near Gifford was plastered with horse-dung. One brought to me from Melville 

 Woods, on the 3rd of May, 1837, by my son, who found in it five eggs, is composed externally of 

 twig.s, straws, and stems of herbaceous plants ; its inner cup of a few slender twigs of trees, steins, and 

 leaves of grasses, oak leaves, and a large proportion of mosses, interwoven and agglutinated, but with- 

 out mud. The lining, which is not thicker than two-twelfths of an inch at most, is certainly composed 

 entirely of fragments of rotten wood and other vegetable substances, without any mud, clay, or dung. 

 Its internal diameter at the mouth is three inches and a half, but below the mouth four inches, the 

 depth two and a half. In all the specimens which I have examined, the mouth of the inner cup is 

 contracted and firmly woven. The eggs are generally five, but vary from four to six, of a regular or 

 broad oval form, bright bluish-green, with scattered spots of brownish-black, of a roundish form, and 

 more numerous at the larger end. They vary considerably in size, the largest in my collection 

 measuring thirteert-twelfths by nine-and-a-half, the smallest, eleven-and-a-half by eight-and-a-half 

 twelfths. They are deposited in the end of April, sometimes so early as the beginning of that month, 

 and sometimes not until May. The young I have found abroad from the 20th of April to the 

 middle of June. Another brood is generally reared in the season." 



The Thrush is so well-known a bird that it hardly merits a separate description. The general 

 colour above is olive-brown, the wing-coverts more or less distinctly tipped with spots of ochre ; the 

 wings and tail are like the back ; the under surface is whitish with a fulvous tinge on the breast and 

 sides ; the ear-coverts, cheeks, fore-neck, chest, and flanks are all spotted with black ; bill blackish- 

 brown, yellowish at the base of the lower mandible ; legs pale flesh colour, iris brown. The female is 

 like the male, but young birds are mottled all over with ochraceous buff streaks on the feathers of the 

 upper surface. 



The under wing-coverts in the Common Thrush are of a rich golden colour, and arc sufficient to 

 distinguish the species at a glance from the nearly allied Redwing (Turdus iliacus), which is a 



