14 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
coast to the highest slopes of the mountains ; 
though where the grass on the mountain-side is 
long and tussocky, the Wheatear is seldom seen, its 
place being taken by the Meadow-pipit. A cock 
Wheatear is a very beautiful bird in its fresh spring 
plumage ; though it has no dazzling colours, its 
clear grey back, white breast and tail-coverts, and 
black eye-patch, wings, and tail make a fresh and 
beautiful contrast. Every bird, moreover, seems 
to have its peculiar stamp of personal character, 
and the Wheatear's is a sort of wholesome and 
sensible brightness which adds much to the attrac- 
tiveness of its ways. It begins to build about the 
middle of April, and makes a loose nest of dry 
grass lined with rabbit's fur and hair in disused 
rabbit-earths, hollows under overhanging edges of 
turf, or under stones, chinks of rocks and dry- 
stone walls, and such similar situations. It displays 
something of the Robin's adaptability in choosing a 
site, sometimes nesting in old boots and kettles, 
and other such rejected odds-and-ends which it finds 
on bits of waste ground. Five or six, sometimes 
seven eggs are laid, of a beautiful light blue, con- 
siderably lighter than either the Hedge-Sparrow*s, 
Whinchat's, or Redstart's, and of the same colour 
as a rather pale variety of the Starling's. In size 
they are also distinctly larger than those of the 
three birds first mentioned above. The cock has 
