324 MISSEL THRUSH. 



There is very little difference in the plumage of the sexes, but the 

 female is not quite so bright in colours. 



The Missel Thrush is by no means plentiful in England, and seems 

 to be less so in winter. It begins to sing in January, if the weather is 

 mild, but ceases so soon as the thermometer sinks below forty degrees. 

 About the middle of March it makes a nest in the fork of some tree, 

 especially such as are covered with white moss, particularly apple-trees ; 

 frequenting orchards more than any other place in the spring, and 

 never building in a bush. 



* The ingeniously constructed nest of the Missel Thrush, has as usual 

 been little attended to by systematic ornithologists. " It builds," says 

 Willughby, " a nest as a jay, commonly with rotten twigs on the outside, 

 and the inside with dead grass, hay, or moss, which he pulls from trees." 

 They construct both the inside and the outside, according to Buffon, with 

 herbage, leaves, and moss, especially the white moss, and their nest re- 

 sembles more that of the blackbird than of the other thrushes, except 

 its being lined with bedding. " The nest," says Atkinson, "is composed of 

 lichen and coarse grass, and lined with wool." They might as well have 

 described an orange as composed of the rind and the pips ; or the Missel 

 Thrush itself as made up of feathers and stomach, without taking any 

 notice of its bones and flesh ; for it is not only a basket-maker, but a 

 mason ; and after it has reared a rough scaffolding of the withered 

 stems of plants, dry grass, and moss, which are placed in great quantity, 

 and with little art, it constructs a substantial wall of clay, of which 

 none of the authors just quoted take the least notice, and we are thence 

 entitled to infer that none of them had seen or examined the nest they 

 undertook to describe. The masonry is not much better finished than 

 the scaffolding, being inferior perhaps to that of the blackbird, and de- 

 cidedly so to that of the song thrush (Turdus musicus) ; but the rude- 

 ness of the scaffolding, and the clay walls built upon it, is amply com- 

 pensated by the ingenious basket-work by which these are subsequently 

 concealed. The nest itself is usually placed in the fork of a tree, such 

 as the pine in wilder districts, or an apple-tree in an orchard, the chief 

 condition being that it should be plentifully surrounded with the larger 

 leafy lichens, such as JBorrera furfuracea, Peltidea scutata, Ramalina 

 fraxinea, fyc, Acharius. Without detaching these from the trees, 

 the bird artfully interweaves them into the contour of the nest, so as 

 partly to conceal the basket-work of fine hay, which is wrought in at 

 the same time, and interwoven with much nicety, both around the 

 brim, and also over the clay, on the outside of the nest farthest from 

 the tree ; the lichens and other moss have only one of their ends 



