OBIGINAL SKETCHES OF BRITISH BIRDS. 201 



native village, and thither I generally betake myself in quest of 

 the earliest arrival of this species. There is an old saying that 

 spring has come when you can place your foot on five full-blown 

 daisies in a cluster, but our feathered visitors, to my thinking, 

 are the best harbingers of the glad time of the year ; and whether 

 it be sight of Wheatear or song of Chiffchaff, there is no doubting 

 the eloquence of the reminder that the frosts and snows of 

 winter are virtually a thing of the past. 



Wheatears only stay a few days on their first arrival in these 

 parts, moving forward to their breeding quarters as soon as they 

 have recuperated their exhausted strength. Yet they afford us 

 more than a passing glimpse of them in September, and it is not 

 at all uncommon when out Partridge-shooting to notice them on 

 the fallows, or in fields where stones have been gathered together 

 into little heaps. Where, however, in the spring time only a 

 single bird had been noticed, in the autumn there would frequently 

 be two of them together. 



I have only met with one instance of this species breeding in 

 Leicestershire, and consider the fact of its having nested where 

 it did most unusual. That Wheatears should repair to the rocky 

 heights round about Bardon and Bradgate to rear their young 

 does not surprise me in the least, for in such wild tracts they are 

 quite in their element ; but that a pair of these birds should have 

 had recourse to a drain-pipe on the turnpike road in Skeffington 

 parish, in which situation they built a nest in May, in the year 

 1875, and laid five eggs of a pale greenish blue speckled very 

 distinctly with brown, was quite a novel experience. The eggs 

 were slightly incubated when I found them, and the birds must 

 have employed a vast amount of cunning to have escaped de- 

 tection so long, as the drain-pipe was within but a short distance 

 of the village school, and there are few boys who are not in- 

 defatigable nest-hunters during their play-hours. This nest was 

 constructed of pretty much the same materials as are to be found 

 in the general run of Wheatears' nests, the lining being of cow- 

 hair, rabbits' fur, and a large quantity of feathers ; but the 

 exterior was composed of fibrous roots, dried bents, moss, and 

 hay, and it was bits of the latter protruding from the drain-pipe 

 that first gave me the clue to the nest. Of course my suspicions 

 had been previously aroused by seeing the birds in the locality. 



