AMONG THE BIRDS IN SUMMER. 103 



Summer is the season chosen by most of the 

 migratory birds for nesting duties, when insect 

 life is abundant. 



It may, perhaps, be as well to take a hurried 

 peep at the domestic arrangements of some of our 

 commoner birds, ere visiting the nests of those 

 only found in remoter districts. One of the 

 most beautiful nests to be met with amongst our 

 southern fields in early summer is that of the 

 Red-backed Shrike. It is a large, bulky structure, 

 usually placed in a lofty bush or hedgerow, and is jSe?^ 3rd 

 made of the dry stalks of plants, grass, roots, and 

 moss, and lined with hair and wool. The eggs 

 are five or six in number, and remarkable for 

 their great diversity of colour. In the orchard 

 trees, especially those trained along the wall, or in 

 a chink of the bark of some rugged elm or oak, 

 we may often find the nest of the Spotted Fly- Sh 

 -catcher. It is a beautiful little structure, made of }*?. I0th 

 grass, and moss, and roots, cemented with spiders' 

 webs, and lined with wool, hair, and feathers, in 

 which the female lays her half-dozen greenish- 

 blue eggs, thickly marbled with brown. In early 

 summer the Redstart, too, is busy bringing up its Redstarts 



. . . ,.' in . nesting, ist 



brood in a nest m some hollow stump, or in aJ une - 

 crevice of a wall, its delicate blue and spotless 

 eggs being exceptionally beautiful objects. In 

 the tangled hedges, and amongst the luxuriant 

 growth of vegetation, in the woods, and by the 

 trout-streams, our delicate summer Warblers are 

 busy bringing up their broods noisy Whitethroats, 



