28 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
which to recognise him, though his common 
country name of " Nettle-creeper is also very 
expressive of his habits. Early in May the White- 
throat builds a compact but rather flimsy nest of 
dry goose-grass and other stems, wound round and 
round and lined with horse-hair, low down in the 
thick of the brambles, nettles, and other rank 
verdure of his haunts. The name of Haychat, 
which is applied in some counties to this and the 
next three species indiscriminately, is derived from 
the materials and appearance of the nest. It is 
seldom more than three feet from the ground, and 
often close upon it. Four to six eggs are laid, 
with a pale hay or straw-coloured ground, freely 
marked with dark and light-grey spots and freckles 
of a rather peculiar appearance, much as if they 
had been put on with a blacklead pencil and half 
rubbed out again. The colouring of the eggs is 
often remarkably close to that of the dry stems 
and black horse-hair of the nest ; and most of 
them have, when fresh, an oddly transparent and 
ghost-like sort of appearance, extremely like that 
of a live shrimp on the sandy floor of a pool. The 
nest does not seem a particularly hard one to find, 
until the dying down of the rank herbage in winter 
reveals dozens of hitherto unsuspected White- 
throats' nests in every wayside hedge and thicket. 
