104 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
and sometimes higher still, though six or seven 
feet may be said to be the average height. It is 
a strongly built and rather untidy structure, chiefly 
composed of twigs, moss, roots, wool, and dry 
tufts of grass and weed, either one or all of these 
kinds of material being used in individual cases. It 
is lined with fine root fibres, moss, hair, wool, and 
feathers. The eggs vary a good deal both in size 
and markings, and may sometimes puzzle the 
inexperienced, though there is not actually any 
other kind of egg which they closely resemble. 
Speaking generally, they are greenish-white in 
ground colour, dashed and speckled with red, 
reddish-brown, and fainter tones of grey. But 
sometimes the ground is a perfectly clean white, 
while it varies from this to a confused stained 
mixture of bluish and greyish-greens. The 
markings, too, are sometimes small, precise spots 
and dashes of dark brown, and sometimes large 
blotched stains of crimson, or clear pink, while all 
these different markings may appear on the same 
egg. Of the two eggs illustrated, the first belongs 
to the most common rather stained and confused 
type, with small markings, while the second is an 
unusually round and oddly marked variety chosen 
to show one of the queerer forms into which these 
eggs sometimes run. Sometimes they are very 
like a Linnet's in colour and markings, but the 
