OBSERVATIONS AND QUERIES. 119 



are bulky structures, lined -with, dry dung, cow-hair, and sheep's-wool, 

 loosely laid together. The "cups" of the nests are very large and deep, 

 compared with those of the Rook and Carrion Crow, and seem out of all pro- 

 portion to the size of the bird and its eggs. I don't know whether this habit 

 is common with the Jackdaw or not. I have not seen it noticed in any book 

 on birds, except in an old " Cyclopaedia,'' where it is said they sometimes do 

 so in the neighbourhood of rookeries. This would apply to one of my locali- 

 ties only. The old nests, which stand the winter well, are the favourite 

 nesting-places of the Long-Eared Owls in late March. Re the Sparrow Hawk, 

 my experience is too slight to have any weight, but the nests I have seen 

 were undoubtedly the work of the birds themselves, and with no old founda- 

 tion. They resembled gigantic Wood Pigeons' nests, with a slight hollow for 

 the eggs. The Long-Eared Owl lays in them, too. In the case of the 

 Kestrel, we read in many books that it either lays in old nests or builds on 

 rock-ledges, etc. Now, I have seen very many Kestrels' nests in ruins and 

 in rocks (as well as in old Magpies' and Jackdaws' nests), but in no case was 

 there the slightest scrap of nest brought by the bird itself. In holes in ruins 

 the eggs were laid among the debris of old 'Daws' nests, and where the Carrion 

 Crow builds on rocks the Kestrel will, no doubt, appropriate an old nest, 

 when deserted. My experience is that of the (Editor's) Handbook : the 

 •eggs are laid on the bare soil. — R. Armstrong (Thornhill, Dumfriesshire). 



Cuckoo's Eggs. — As the eggs of the Cuckoo are now so much engaging 

 the attention of naturalists, a few notes on those I have obtained this year, 

 twenty in all, may be of interest. The first egg was brought in on May 

 18th, and the last on June 28th, and they are from the nests of the following 

 species: — Yellow Bunting, five; Hedge Sparrow, four; Meadow Pipit, 

 four; Pied Wagtail, one; Spotted Flycatcher, one; Robirj. one; Sedge 

 Warbler, one ; Greenfinch, two ; and one from an old nest put up by 

 my brother as a bait for the Cuckoo. The four from the nest of the 

 Meadow Pipit were all taken by the same person at the same place, and 

 are so precisely alike that there can be little doubt as to their having been 

 laid by the same hen Cuckoo ; one from the same locality, in the nest of 

 the Yellow Bunting, is quite unlike the other four. Those from the Hedge 

 Sparrows' nests are of three different types ; two from one bird (same 

 neighbourhood), the others quite distinct. The egg laid in the Sedge 

 Warbler's nest is interesting from the fact that I took it quite fresh on June 

 20th, and on June 20th last year I found a similar egg, al.>o quite fresh, in a 

 Sedge Warbler's nest within five minutes' walk of the spot where this one 

 was taken. Both are large eggs, and quite unlike any others we possess. 

 The egg from the Pied Wagtail's nest was taken from ihe same ivy wall in 

 which I found the Pied Wagtail's nest with the Cuckoo's ess in 1894 and 



