NOTES AND QUERIES. 21 



covered tree, or in a furze-bush, and in such places their nests are not 

 nearly so neat. Thus many birds adapt their habits to circumstances. I 

 once found a Mistle Thrush's nest in a hole in a wall, the explanation 

 being that there were no trees near. — G. H. Pentland (Black Hall, 

 Drogheda). 



Nesting of the Goldcrest. — Referring to the correspondence which has 

 appeared on the nest of the Goldcrest (Zool. 1895, pp. 385, 431, 448), I 

 send a few notes which may be of interest. I never saw the nest of this 

 bird against the trunk of a tree, but always on a branch. It was generally 

 in a young spruce, and a few feet from the ground, sometimes above, 

 oftener below, the branch. Early in the nesting-season of 1838 I knew 

 of a nest, the situation of which was rather unusual. It was near the top 

 of a full-grown spruce, about forty feet from the ground, in the usual 

 position under a branch well clothed with the green fir-needles. The birds 

 forsook this nest before any eggs were laid. In May, 1889, 1 saw a nest 

 built above a branch of spruce only three or four feet from the ground, and 

 at a little distance from the trunk. I may mention that in this case, con- 

 trary to the usually shy habits of the Goldcrest, the bird would allow itself 

 to be touched when sitting on its eggs. — J. W. Payne (Edinburgh). 



Nesting of the Goldcrest.— I should like to point out to Mr. H. A. 

 Macpherson that the original issue raised by Mr. A. T. Mitchell was 

 confined solely to the fact of the Goldcrest building " commonly against the 

 sides of ivy-covered trees " in a certain Irish district, in contradistinction, as 

 he had supposed, to the habits generally adopted by the species in 

 England. I deny that there was any question raised as to the nest being 

 placed in other situations, such as in furze-bushes or low junipers; and 

 Hevvitson's statement, recorded in the fourth edition of Yarrell, and repro- 

 duced by Mr. Macpherson, is absolutely irrelevant. So far as my researches 

 have extended — and I have consulted no less than thirty ornithological 

 publications — Montagu and Mudie alone make any allusion to the Gold- 

 crest nesting amidst ivy clinging to the boles of trees ; and when I found 

 Yarrell, Howard Saunders, Bowdler Sharpe, Seebohm, Harting, Meyer, 

 Hewitson, Macgillivray, Adams, Syme, Selby, Jennings, Atkinson, Jardine, 

 Stannard, Hudson, Neville Wood, Swaysland, Harcourt-Bath, Gordon, 

 Knapp, Morris, Bewick, Johns, Bechstein, J. G. Wood, Butler, and 

 C. Dixon never so much as making even incidental mention of this site 

 being utilised, I said truly, and say again, that it is " one which authors 

 with common consent have apparently ignored." I repeat, the point of 

 Mr. Mitchell's original note, and of my subsequent communication, had 

 reference solely to the Goldcrest nidificating against the sides of ivy-covered 

 trees, as the numbers of ' The Zoologist ' for October and November will 

 bear witness; and though Mr. Macpherson remarks that the fourth edition 

 of Yarrell tells us " such a situation is occasionally adopted," I beg to say, 



