1870.] LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. 749 
with all this a heavy frost is sure to prove fatal to one or more birds 
in the flock, and sometimes several individuals that have dropped 
from the branches stiff with cold may be found under the trees where 
they have roosted. In the morning, if fair, the flock betakes itself 
to some large tree on which the sun shines, and settle on the outer- 
most twigs on its eastern side, each bird with its wings drooping and 
its back turned towards the sun. In this attitude, so spiritless, but 
denoting such great sagacity, they spend an hour or two warming 
their blood and drying the dew from their scanty dress. During the 
day they bask much in the sun, and towards night may be again 
seen on the sunny side of a hedge or tree warming their backs in 
the last rays. It is owing, I think, to its fecundity and to an abun- 
dance of food that the Urraca is able to maintain its place in our 
fauna; otherwise the cold, its only enemy, would surely prove fatal 
to it. 
With the return of warm weather it becomes active, noisy, and 
the gayest of birds ; the flock constantly wanders about from place to 
place, the birds flying in a scattered desultory manner one behind the 
other, and incessantly uttering, while on the wing, a querulous, com- 
plaining cry. At intervals through the day they utter a species of 
song, composed of a number of long modulated whistling notes, the 
first powerful and vehement, and becoming at each repetition lower 
and shorter, then suddenly ending in a succession of hoarse internal 
notes resembling the heavy breathing or snoring of a man asleep. 
When approached, the whole flock breaks out into a chorus of alarm, 
with notes so aunoyingly loud, shrill, and sustained, that the intruder, 
be it man or beast, is generally glad to quit their vicinity. As the 
breeding-season approaches, they are heard, probably the males, to 
utter a variety of low aud soft chattering notes ; they then separate 
in pairs and grow more silent, becoming also very circumspect in 
their movements. The nest is usually built in a large thorn tree, 
and is composed of rather stout sticks; these are sometimes so 
rudely put together that the eggs fall from it. Other nests are 
found more ingeniously constructed, deep, and lined with fibres of 
weeds, dry or green leaves. ‘The nest usually contains six or seven 
eges, but often more; and I have once found one with fourteen. It 
seems incredible that one bird should have laid all these eggs, the 
eggs being so very large in proportion to the bird’s size ; yet there was 
but one pair of Urracas in the neighbourhood of this nest, for I had 
watched them from the moment they began to build. The eggs, 
when fresh, are very beautiful, being of a rich sky-blue, thickly spotted 
with white. The white spots are composed of a soft calcareous sub- 
stance, apparently deposited on the surface of the shell after its com- 
plete formation. When the egg is newly laid, they may be easily 
washed off with water, and are so extremely delicate that their purity 
is lost on the egg being taken into the hand. The young birds 
hatched from these lovely eggs are proverbial for their ugliness, Pichon 
de Urraca being an epithet commonly applied here to a person re- 
markable for want of comeliness. They are as filthy as they are 
ugly, so that the nest, generally containing six or eight young, 
