THE "BUSH" MAGPIE 305 



factor in the life-history of a bird, constitutes any 

 specific distinction. The jay, for instance, generally 

 builds her nest in a bush \ but I have found it, more 

 than once, at the top of a fir tree, thirty or forty feet 

 from the ground. Where game is much preserved 

 and the magpie much persecuted, she builds if 

 indeed she builds or exists at all close to the top 

 of the thickest fir tree, where the nest, huge though 

 it is, is often hardly to be distinguished from the 

 surrounding branches. In more favoured districts, 

 where the balance of Nature is not so much disturbed, 

 and where guns are scarce, as, for instance, in one 

 part, at least, of Dorsetshire, in many parts of 

 Somersetshire, and in the broad tract of pasture 

 which, as in the Harrow district, surrounds the 

 ever-advancing London, and separates it from the 

 preserves beyond, it is a fairly common bird, and 

 makes its nest, without the slightest attempt at 

 concealment, in a hedge-row elm, beginning to con- 

 struct it in March, many weeks before it can be, in 

 any degree, screened by the foliage. 



Within the last few years, this beautiful and 

 usually shy bird has followed the example of the 

 wood-pigeons which add so much to the interest of 

 the London parks, and venturing over the leagues 



of intervening houses, has domiciled itself safely in 



u 



