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slope, where the soil has given way and left an abrupt edge. Wherever there is a steep bank 

 covered with high ling, whether it be sloping down to a stream or an old road, you may almost 

 safely calculate upon finding a Ring-Ouzel's nest every two or three hundred yards or so, though 

 some of them may be a year or two old. On the 9th of May, 1870, a party of three of us spent 

 a couple of hours on the moors searching for Ring-Ouzel's nests. Our head-quarters were a 

 farm-house, about two miles on this side of Arhopton. In the course of perhaps a three 

 miles' round, including a mile of old road and about the same distance of mountain-stream with 

 steep banks on each side, we found nearly a dozen old nests, two nearly completed, two with four 

 eggs in each, and one with four young birds. I have never found a nest amongst the short 

 heather ; they appear invariably to choose the shelter of ling, at least a foot high. In one 

 instance the nest was placed on a rock on the very top of the moors, in a cavity perhaps eighteen 

 inches high, nearly the same depth, and twice as wide, in the range of rocks which skirts the 

 edge of the moors. In this hole in the rock some plants of ling had got a footing, and sheltered 

 behind them were three old Ring-Ouzel's nests. In many instances the foundations of the nests 

 appear to have been puddled with mud, but in others nothing of the kind can be traced. In the 

 cases where it was placed on the bare rock a ring of mud formed the foundation of the structure. 

 The nest is very similar to that of the Blackbird or Missel-Thrush, perhaps a little looser in its 

 construction and a trifle shallower. The outside is composed of coarse dry grass, with here and 

 there a leaf or two and a little dry moss. Almost always there is a twig or two of heather woven 

 into the nest, and not nnfrequently a slender twig of larch. The inside in all the nests which I 

 have seen was substantially lined with dry stalks of that very fine dark green grass which abounds 

 on the moors ; but all are dry and yellow as two-year old hay. So far as my experience goes, the 

 Ring-Ouzel always lays four eggs. The typical egg has a ground-colour almost as blue as 

 that of a Thrush, with blotches and little spots, especially towards the large end, of reddish 

 brown or chestnut. Very rarely you may find a Blackbird's egg which might be difficult to tell 

 from that of the Ring-Ouzel, but the latter are much more likely to be confounded with those of 

 the Missel-Thrush. I have eggs of the latter bird in which the ground-colour is unusually blue, 

 and Ring-Ouzel's eggs in which the ground-colour is unusually brown, which it is quite impossible 

 to distinguish from each other." 



Mr. Robert Collett has further sent us some observations on the breeding of the bird in 

 Norway : — " Its nest is placed under juniper bushes or in low bushes ; and in Hallingdal I have 

 found one so high up in the fells that it was placed on the very last stunted fir bush. This nest, 

 on the 22nd of June, 1863, contained four eggs, which were about five or six days' incubated, and 

 one of which was much lighter in colour than the rest. The nest resembled that of Turclus 

 pilaris ; but the foundation was composed of greener materials. In some instances I have found 

 six eggs in one nest. The eggs are deposited late in May and up to the end of June, on the 21st 

 and 23rd of which month I have seen fledged young." According to Count Wodzicki's obser- 

 vations in Galicia, only the older birds breed twice in the year, building their first nest amongst 

 the snow ; the younger birds breed only once in the season. 



Hewitson gives good illustrations of the eggs in his work on the ' Eggs of British Birds ' 

 (i. p. 93), remarking that the nest "'is very similar to that of the Blackbird, and is outwardly 

 composed of pieces of heather and coarse grass, with a slight layer of clay, and thickly lined with 



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