2 MISSEL THRUSH 
Magpie’s in a tree, and a nest at Greeba was built on a 
ledge of rock, though surrounded by a plantation. At Traie 
Fugog, near Peel, a nest was for at least three successive 
years placed on a ledge of sandstone rock over the shore, 
about eight feet high; the remains in 1904 contained 
a scrap of window-curtain,’ the nest that year having been 
destroyed. I have also observed a family in a rocky and 
heathery hollow on Clay Head, where in all probability 
they had been hatched.’ In the solitary glen of the Onchan 
Abbey lands another nest was placed on the timber of 
a disused and decaying water-wheel, part of the machinery 
of an abandoned mine. In this case also trees were 
close at hand. Mr. Kermode states that it is the only bird 
he has known to breed in the ‘Monkey Puzzle’ (Arauearta 
imbricata), which it did at Riversdale, near Ramsey, in the 
last week of March 1885, after being persecuted by cats. 
(See, however, under ‘ Magpie.’) He has also known its 
nest in a blackthorn, a few feet from the ground. But its 
strangest nesting site was one shown to me by Mr. F. 8. 
Graves, in 1901, on ‘the capital of the shafts supporting the 
arch of the south transept in the ruined Cathedral of 
St. Germans, Peel, a flat ledge about six inches wide. The 
young were successfully reared, and in 1902 the birds 
again built in a similar position in the north transept after 
considerable difficulty, as the nest was twice blown off the 
ledge by the wind. On the 19th May there were two eggs 
and two newly-hatched young in the nest, which was 
afterwards robbed by some prowling visitors, or possibly by 
1 Tam told by Mr. Wm. Quayle that when Governor Hope lived at Lorn House, 
some valuable lace belonging to Lady Isabella, his wife, was once missing from 
the grounds, where it had been put out to bleach ; a long streamer was at length 
observed hanging from the nest of a Missel Thrush, and led to the discovery of 
the whole of the lost lace wrought into the structure. 
2 Mr. Burnett tells me that nests have also been built on low crags close to the 
sea near Langness lighthouse, and in 1905 a pair almost certainly bred on the 
rocks near Scarlett Point. 
