BLACKBIRD. 27 
BLACKBIRD. 
TurpUs mERULA, Linn. 
Pl. VIL, figs. 10-18 ; and Pl. XXXVIL., fig. 4. 
Geogr. distr. Common and generally distributed nearly all over 
Europe; partially resident in the British Isles; it occurs in Palestine, 
Persia, Cashmere and Afghanistan. 
Food.—Insects, spiders, grubs, worms, fruit, and seeds. 
Nest.—Bulky; round, semicircular, or oval, according to where it is 
placed, formed externally of stalks of grass and twigs twisted together 
and compacted with moss, usually with an inner lining of mud in 
pellets, roots, dead leaves, slender grasses, &c.; in the neighbourhood 
of houses the outside is sometimes disfigured by the interweaving of 
old rags and pieces of newspaper with the twigs and moss. 
Position of nest.—In hedges, shrubs, trees (especially trained fruit 
trees in orchards), holes in walls or rocks, or in low banks, where, 
however, it is less abundantly found. 
Number of eggs. 4-6; generally 5. 
Time of nidification. TII-VII; May and June. 
Probably no nest is more easy to find than that of the 
Blackbird ; it is not only so abundant that I believe I have 
met with at least forty in a morning, but it is large, and 
often placed in the most conspicuous position. Though 
the parent birds are most devoted to their young, they 
appear not to have much affection for their eggs, for I 
have known the cock bird to devour them as fast as they 
were deposited, though, curiously enough, it only break- 
fasted off one each morning ; probably no bird has a poorer 
appreciation of form or colour, for the most irregular flint 
stones may be substituted for its eggs without causing it 
the least uneasiness—a fact well known to the rustics, 
who constantly take an egg out of the nest, and, sub- 
stituting the nearest stone, revisit it confidently on the 
following day, knowing that another egg will be ready to 
hand. The strange thing to me is that the discomfort of 
sitting upon a rough or sharp-edged substance fails to 
open the bird’s eyes to the true state of the case. The 
white egg on Pl. XXXVII. was one of a pair taken from 
an ordinary nest at Wateringbury, near Maidstone, and 
presented to me by its discoverer. 
