Notes and Queries. 



117 



rich notes, but although they sometimes extended their flight to a distance 

 of half-a-mile, they invariably returned as soon as the cause of their alarm 

 had gone. On the 13th of May I found the nest of the birds in the centre 

 of the enclosure. The eggs, four in number, were snugly concealed in an 

 overhanging tuft of grass, and a few pieces of bent and grass only inter- 

 vened between them and the ground. They were very richly marked 

 specimens, and this is the first known instance of redshanks breeding in 

 this locality. A pair of this species visited the same piece of land six years 

 ago, but after staying a day or two they disappeared ; and though they 

 might have bred on some of the moors around, T never heard of anyone 

 having noticed them. — Thomas CAiiXER, Burton House, Masham. 



Notes on Birds' Nests from North Yorkshire, — In the past nesting 

 season of 1883, the following came under my observation : — The first nest 

 I found, containing eggs, Avas on April 6th, and was that of a green 

 peewit. The eggs were five in number, all similarly marked, and 

 evidently produced by the same bird. There were no footsteps near the 

 nest, so the fifth egg could not have been added by anyone. It is the 

 first nest of this species I ever found containing more than four eggs, and 

 though I have made enquiries of professional egg gatherers, I cannot hear 

 of anyone having noticed this number of eggs before. This clutch of eggs 

 was destroyed, and on May 13th, in the same field (a ploughed one), 

 about thirty yards from the first nest, there was again a peewit's nest 

 containing five eggs. On June 15th, when beating up a tall hedgerow, I 

 startled a willow wren from its nest, which was built in the usual domed 

 shape, but was placed in the top of a thick blackthorn bush, three and a 

 half feet from the ground. In the centre of a marshy field, snugly con- 

 cealed in a tussock of tall grass, and quite on the ground, was a blackbird's 

 nest. The nearest bush was fully twenty yards distant, and as the field 

 was bounded by fences, the birds could not have been at a loss for an 

 ordinary site. Another blackbird's nest I found twenty-five feet from the 

 ground, against the trunk of a large tree, in a cavity formed by the 

 tearing off" of a bough. A third was built in a wood, on the stump of a 

 hazel bush just raised from the surface of the ground, but quite concealed 

 by a luxuriant growth of dogs mercury. A clutch of chafiinch's eggs were 

 perfectly blue, without any spots. In a disused chimney pot, which was 

 blocked up not far from the top, a starling took up its abode, and though 

 the nest was quite open to the heavens, the young ones were safely reared. 

 A swallow built its nest inside a moveable hut on wheels (very similar to 

 a bathing machine, and used as a cake receptacle), which had only been 

 recently brought into a field, and was some quarter of a mile from any 

 house. The young fledged in due course. In a cavity in the river bank, 

 formed and occupied the previous year by a pair of kingfishers, was placed 

 a sand martin's nest, which contained eggs when I found it. Putting my 

 fingers inside a chaflanch's nest, and expecting to find eggs, I was some- 

 what startled to find it occupied by a large humble bee, which had a 



