2 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



When captured it had a partially clipped wing and a deformed 

 foot, looking as though it had been caught in a trap. It was put 

 into a cage, and kept at the farm through the winter. In the 

 spring the bailiff's wife gave it to my wife, and we kept it in a 

 cage in the drawing-room. But it never would talk, and only 

 screamed in a harsh voice ; so that when in June, 1900, it 

 escaped whilst the cage was being cleaned, and, as its wing- 

 feathers had grown again, flew off, we did not greatly regret it. 

 It flew almost at once to the farm not a quarter of a mile away, 

 and fed daily with the chickens, but did not allow itself to be 

 taken, though it was never far from the poultry-yard. 



In October, 1900, it was observed to be busy on the roof of 

 the farmhouse, weaving a tunnel-shaped bower with twigs, which 

 it did in a very well-chosen place where the thatched roof ran into 

 a brick chimney, getting both shelter from the wind and warmth. 

 This tunnel was about a yard long, and the mouth of it is the 

 lower orifice in Jig. 1. In December, as it got colder, the bird 

 changed the direction of the entrance, and it retired to this 

 tunnel every night, and lived out the winter there. In the 

 spring of 1901 it added another tunnel parallel to the first, the 

 two openings side by side ; but soon it blocked up this, and built 

 another above it, and then again turned the mouth of the tunnel 

 round towards the roof-tiles (see Jig. 1), in order apparently to 

 prevent the wet south-west wind blowing direct into its tunnel. 



It always occupied the latest part of the structure, often sitting 

 in the mouth of the opening by day, but retiring inside for 

 the night. The structure was now a yard and a half or two 

 yards long. In April it became necessary to put new thatch on 

 the roof, but this was done without disturbing the bird or its 

 building, and it soon became very active, snipping off the twigs 

 from a hawthorn hedge, and carrying them in its beak, screech- 

 ing as it flew, with a very quick beat of its thin pointed wings, 

 and with its pin-tail never spread. It worked most industriously, 

 taking a long time to fix each twig, and weaving them together 

 very neatly at the opening, which was about six inches across, 

 and all the way along the tunnel inside. The outside twigs, 

 though they all looked rather haphazard, were so interwoven 

 that no wind ever displaced them. 



By May it had greatly enlarged the pile, and had brought it 



