586 BRITISH BIRDS. 



When I was in Copenhagen both Mr. Benzoii and Pastor Theobald gave 

 me an animated account of their discovery of the nest of the Nutcracker. 

 It seems always to choose a not very tall pine tree^ and there, from 18 to 

 25 feet from the ground, it builds a bulky nest on a branch against the 

 stem. The outside diameter is about a foot, and the outside depth about 

 five inches. The hollow containing the eggs is four inches in diameter, 

 and from one and a half to two inches deep. The foundation is composed 

 of lichen-covered twigs of larch and spruce, finished ofi^ with fresh birch- 

 twigs, and lined with dry grass and the inner bark of trees with a little 

 loose earth; the final lining is grass, generally dry, but sometimes fresh. 

 At the nest the birds are extremely shy and quiet. All their former 

 trustfulness and familiarity is gone, and they flit noiselessly about the 

 forests, approaching and leaving the nest in the most wary manner possible. 

 It is said never to utter a cry unless its nest is threatened. Eggs have 

 been taken in Central Europe from the 10th of Marcli to the 27th of April. 

 Herr Schiitt, speaking of the nest which he found in the Black Forest, 

 says : — " It was about 25 feet from the ground, and was built close to the 

 stem, and was difficult to see from below. It was found on the 19th of 

 March ; the first egg -nas laid on the 23rd, the second on the 26th, and 

 the third on the 29th. On the 1st of April, no further egg having been 

 laid, the boy, to my regret, took the nest. When we first found the nest 

 the bird did not utter a cry until we were close to its treasures, when we 

 heard it in the distance ; and an hour after we had left it the cries of the 

 bird were still to be heard. When the nest was taken it did not fly off 

 until the boy was climbing up the tree, when it perched upon the top of 

 the tree and saw the fate of its nest without uttering a cry." The duties 

 of incubation are said to devolve upon the female alone, who sits very 

 close and is assiduously fed by the male. 



The number of eggs varies from three to five. They are very pale bluish 

 white in ground-colour, sometimes creamy white, thickly spotted with 

 olive-brown, and freckled over most of the surface with faint underlying 

 markings of violet-grey. Some specimens are much more sparingly 

 marked than others, and have the spots chiefly on the large end and very 

 small. In others a few of the surface-spots are large, intermingled with 

 smaller markings of the same colour ; and in one specimen in my collec- 

 tion there are traces of a streak of rich brown. They vary from 1-4 to 

 1-2G inch in length and from I'O to "92 inch in breadth. The eggs of the 

 Nutcracker very closely resemble a certain type of the egg of the Magpie ; 



but the ground-colour appears always to be paler in the Nutcracker's in 



about the same proportion that a Starling's egg bears to a Rose-coloured 

 Pastor's. From pale varieties of the Jackdaw's eggs they may be distin- 

 guished by the much finer grain of their shell, which is also thinner, and 



