244 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



unusual with these birds), and had the feathers of the tibia 

 also white. 



Redbreast. — On March 30th, 1890, I examined a nest with 

 three eggs in the ivy on the wall of a house in Bloxham. The 

 bird had been building a long time. Foundation of dead leaves, 

 honeysuckle, bark, &c, which apparently kept slipping down and 

 away from the wall ; so that the nest was about ten inches wide 

 at the base and six or seven inches thick. This great structure 

 was very conspicuous, and was then partly kept up by some long 

 stalks of growing ivy leaves inclosed in it. It sloped up to the 

 top (the slope being about ten inches long), where a nest of moss, 

 wool, and hair, lined with the latter, was formed. The leaves 

 used were of various kinds, many of them beech. 



Nightingale. — Abundant about Oxford and in mid-Oxon. 

 Mr. F. W. Lambert, of Oxford, writes me word that in the course 

 of a day's walk round Marston, Headington, Elsfield, Wood Eaton, 

 Beckley, and Noke, he has met with perhaps twenty birds. He 

 once heard five singing at the same time in Marston Copse. The 

 nest of the Nightingale is usually found with its full complement 

 of eggs in Oxon in the third week in May. Mr. Lambert has 

 given me the following list of nests found, confirming this : — 31st 

 May, 1885, five eggs ; loth May, 1886, five eggs ; 16th May, 1886, 

 four eggs ; 23rd May, 1886, five eggs ; 23rd May, 1887, five eggs ; 

 19th May, 1889, five eggs; 3rd June, 1888, five young; 10th June, 

 1888, five eggs; 17th May, 1890, five eggs; 19th May, 1890, five 

 eggs. One of the keepers at Combury Park told me in July, 1889, 

 that they had four pairs there that spring. Charles Townsend, 

 a gardener, of Bloxham, remarked to me about the strange 

 disappearance of this species from the parish. They used to 

 frequent most of the spinneys about the village, but he never 

 heard one now. He had been within a few yards of the birds, 

 and had taken their nests and eggs. A friend living here tells 

 me that Nightingales frequented the village until about ten or 

 fifteen years ago. They always sang in his plantation near the 

 house, and even in a Portugal laurel within a few yards of the 

 windows. One of the last nests found in this neighbourhood 

 was found in 1886 by Mr. E. Colegrove in a spinney at Milcombe ; 

 another nest was found at Holywell, on the edge of Tadmarton 

 Heath (in the fox-cover of which I heard a bird in 1880), a few 

 years before that. The Nightingale is still common at Oxford 



