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stream with an undulatory desultory flight, and as often as not take refuge in a tree, from 
which, if you happen to be too near their nest, they will keep up an incessant hoo'-in, chiz'-it, 
the last syllable sometimes repeated. As the summer advances they leave the localities where 
they have reared their young, as I believe most other birds do, and, still following the streams, 
slowly migrate towards warmer regions. Late in the summer I have seen them on the stones in 
the Porter and the Don, sometimes running along the roof of a steel-warehouse by the river- 
side in the centre of Sheffield. I have almost always found the nest of the Grey Wagtail under 
an overhanging ledge of rock, built upon the clay or rocky bank, and well concealed behind 
grass or other herbage. Once only I saw one built in the fork of three stems of alder, close to 
the ground, almost overhanging the river-side. On the 20th of May, 1871, I took a stroll along 
the banks of the Derwent with my friend Mr. Charles Doncaster, who was to show me a Grey 
Wagtail’s nest, from which he had taken four egys the previous day, substituting four Wren’s 
eggs for them. The nest, he told me, was lined as usual with white cow’s hair. We were sur- 
prised to find the four Wren’s eggs gone, the lining of the nest having been ejected with them. 
A fifth Grey Wagtail’s egg had been laid in the damaged nest, which turned out to have been 
built upon the ruins of an old Thrush’s nest containing broken egg-shells. A little further down 
the river we found a second Grey Wagtail’s nest, containing five young birds, built upon a bank 
where we had searched in vain a fortnight before, guessing from the movements of a pair of 
birds that they must have a nest not far off. The Grey Wagtail seems to have a great attach- 
ment to its favourite breeding-places. I have found the nest year after year upon the same ledge 
of a rocky bank. The eggs are laid towards the end of April or early in May. ‘The nest is very 
similar to that of the Pied Wagtail, a trifle smaller inside, and perhaps a little deeper and more 
carefully made. It is almost entirely composed of fine roots, with a few stalks of dry grass in 
the outer and coarser portion, and is lined with cow’s hair, the preference being given to white. 
I have never seen any feathers used. Five seems to be the usual complement of eggs. 
“In the spring of 1873 I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with this charming 
bird in the classic region of the Parnassus, in a locality very similar to the wilder Derbyshire 
dales. The little village of Agoriane, between three and four thousand feet above the level of 
the sea, enjoys a climate very similar to that of the high Peak of Derbyshire. The foliage in 
the neighbourhood is also very similar. Here you meet with the hawthorn, the oak, and the 
holly, as well as the bramble, ivy, and the dog-rose. Many of the birds, too, are the same. Not 
far from the village flows a mountain-stream, conveying the melted snow of the Parnassus down 
to the Topolais marsh—the Dead Sea of Greece. ‘This stream runs at the bottom of a deep 
mountain-gorge, singularly wild and picturesque, in many places all but inaccessible, and fre- 
quently concealed by dense foliage. I explored its course for some distance, up into the pine- 
region, and down almost into the valley, the region of the vine, and could almost fancy myself to 
be scrambling in one of the wilder branches of the Derwent. I found my old friend the Dipper 
breeding exactly as if he were in Derbyshire; and keeping him company was my special favourite 
the Grey Wagtail. The nests of the latter were in similar situations to those I have described, 
but the materials slightly varied. Moss and soft grass took the place of roots; and the lining of 
hair was very thick, as if to protect the young birds from the night air, which is so much colder 
in the Parnassus than in Derbyshire. Of one nest I noted down at the time that it was pro- 
