OBIGINAL SKETCHES OF BRITISH BIRDS. 9 



autumnal months, well hung and not too long before the fire, 

 would run them both very close. 



Touching the vexed point of the Eedwing nesting in this 

 country, I am aware that it has been reported to have done so 

 — indeed, on more than one occasion in my own county — but, 

 though such may have been the case, it is quite out of the 

 question that the mere ipse dixit of, it may be, an anonymous 

 correspondent to some paper should be accepted as authoritative 

 on the point. Actual and absolute proof of its nest and eggs 

 having been obtained in this country has not yet been forth- 

 coming, I fancy, and until the birds are killed at the nest and the 

 eggs taken, ornithologists will do well to receive with the fullest 

 reserve all affirmative statements that have hitherto appeared on 

 the subject. It is very easy to make an assertion ; it is another 

 matter to prove it. The writer has frequently been girded at as 

 being too particular in his wish for indisputable evidence on 

 sundry points connected with birds, but he maintains that it is a 

 subject on which one cannot possibly be too particular. Only 

 consider for a moment what distinguished modern writers on 

 ornithology have done with a mass of flimsy and unsupported 

 evidence relative to the appearance of this or that rare species in 

 this or that part of the kingdom : why, they have rejected it as 

 utterly unreliable ; and had only a proper test been applied in the 

 first instance to communications of the kind, ancient books on the 

 subject of birds would have contained far less fiction. 



However, to return to the Redwing. I have had its eggs from 

 Norway, and they much resemble small varieties of those of the 

 Blackbird, the ground colour being almost entirely hidden by 

 tiny streaks, which are evenly distributed over the whole surface. 

 It has a sweet pleasing twittering kind of song as I have heard it, 

 but I am not at all sure that I have heard the real thing, for the 

 reason supplied by the quotation from ' A Spring and Summer in 

 Lapland.' "An Old Bushman" writes : — " Of all the northern 

 songsters, perhaps the Redwing stands first on the list, and is 

 with justice called the northern Nightingale, for a sweeter song I 

 never wish to listen to." This is enthusiastic writing, which I 

 can appreciate without, I regret, being in a position to endorse. 

 I can never have heard the Redwing at its best. 



