6 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
the darkening days of November it is particularly 
beautiful to hear it proclaiming, as it were, the 
sure return of spring, with almost as much force 
and fire as it exhibits in its true spring song. The 
small proportion of the birds which dwell all the 
winter in gardens and other sheltered and well- 
provisioned places begin to nest very early In the 
year, and have often laid their first set of eggs by 
the end of February. The more roving birds of 
the fields begin to build in numbers by the end of 
March or so, according to the mildness or severity 
of the season. May is mostly occupied with incu- 
bation and the care of the young, but towards the 
end of the month or in early June there is often a 
simultaneous appearance of large numbers of fresh 
nests and eggs again, these being mostly second 
broods, but some of them possibly the first essays 
of birds which have been furthest and longest in 
the south. The nest is built almost anywhere in 
bushes, trees, and hedges, of moss, twigs, dry 
garden weeds, and similar material, with a sub- 
stantial amount of mud well worked into the 
foundation, and with the curious and well-known 
lining of smooth, cement-like mud, cow-dung, or 
wet and rotten touch-wood. The cement lining is 
sometimes, but rarely, more or less completely 
omitted if suitable material is not easily to be 
found. The eggs take thirteen days to hatch after 
