Birds. 



8843 



the lien laid ami sat on five eggs, and brought up four young ones. Six or seven men 

 were working in the shop almost daily. — /. Ranson. 



Nests of the Robin. — I have often been struck with the great difference in the 

 materials of which the robin's nest is built. Three nests built last year in one village, 

 showed in a remarkable degree this variety in the materials. The first nest was built 

 in the side of a hay-rick, and the outer materials were hay. The second was built 

 among some young shoots growing on the trunk of a very ancient churchyard elm, 

 and the materials were moss from the banks of a neighbouring wood. The third nest 

 was built on a cam side at the bottom of a dead fence, and in a narrow lane at the 

 opposite side of which there was an oak-planting. Two young gentlemen, having 

 found this nest, set me to find it, telling me it was between two gates, which were 

 about a hundred yards from each other. I carefully examined the bank no less than 

 three times without success, when the parent betrayed it. In the whole course of my 

 experience I never saw so complete a deception. The cam was thickly strewn with 

 oak leaves, and oak leaves were thickly woven into the nest, which was half imbedded 

 in the bank and canopied by the twitch grass, which grew thickly about, and among 

 which the last year's leaves of the oak were thickly matted. The nest seemed a part 

 of the bank, and assimilated so well with the oak leaves and herbage with which it was 

 surrounded, that I believe no boy, however keen his eye, would have detected it, 

 unless it was betrayed by the parent. The nest in the rick, being built of hay, was 

 also bad to detect; and the nest in the elm seemed to be a par tof the trunk, the old 

 moss being of the same colour as the knot upon which it rested, and from which the 

 young shoots sprung. The three nests were built of the materials best calculated to 

 deceive and best assimilating to the surrounding objects. Had the architects been 

 endowed with reason they could not have hid their nests better than they were hid. — 

 Id. 



The " Query about the Robin." — Captain Hadfield having made a few objections 

 to the truth of the "Query about the Robin " (Zool. 8523), I feel myself called upou 

 to make a few remarks on his observations. The Captain's communication reads as if 

 I had vouched for the truth cf the popular notion, which I carefully avoided doing. 

 To believe the young ones killed off the old ones or made war upon them, is, says your 

 correspondent, " so unnatural." If it were not something uncommon there would be 

 nothing strange in it, and there would be no need to call attention to it. There are 

 two or three things in the Captain's communication that convince me that he is but 

 little acquainted with the habits of the robin. First, he says, " the parent birds have 

 to rebuild and rear another progeny before reappearing in our gardens." The mistake 

 into which the writer has fallen is one that is very common, namely, that the robin 

 leaves the gardens and retires from the villages to build its nest and rear its young, 

 and is thus withdrawn from our observation. My experience goes to prove that the 

 robin rarely withdraws far from its winter haunts to build its nest, and it will not leave 

 the garden if it can find a convenient place to build in. This year I ha ve had two 

 nests in my garden, both in holes in the wall, and I have known of four others, — one 

 in a garden wall, two at the bottom of a hedge, not a stone's throw from a farm-house, 

 and the fourth in a tool-basket in a joiner's shop at the bottom of a garden. I have 

 known, at three different times, of a nest in a slit of the privy wall, above a score in 

 cow-sheds and stables, several in hay-ricks, outbuildings, holes in the wall, and there 

 has not been, for the last seven years, a year in which I have not had two or three in 

 my garden. I have no hesitation in saying that the buiiding away from the near 



