70 
SYLVIADiE. 
iiiiig a new nest, or, if they have not l)een niiich disturhed, 
merely repairing the old one. Occasionally the same nest will 
be occupied for two successive seasons. The situation varies 
greatly. I have sometimes found it in rabbit burrows and 
])eat-stacks, more rarely beside a stone in a hollow of the 
ground, closely overhung with a Imnch of heather. It is most 
usually placed in the hole of a wall or quarry, somewhat near 
the ground, among heaps of large stones, or under shelter of a 
sod in a ploughed field. Wheatears sometimes build in holes 
of walls upon the remains of old nests of the house-sparrow. 
About the middle of June I found one in such a situation ; it 
was composed of the usual materials, and could easily be lifted 
entirely away from the flattened remains of the old nest. 
Sometimes the order of things is reversed, and if the crevice 
be sufficiently large a house-sparrow will construct its own 
comparatively clumsy habitation upon the neat little nest of a 
Wheatear. Not unfrequently the nest is situated in a hole in 
the face of a low peat cutting, not very far back, and I have 
found it in a crevice upon the sun-dried surface of the peat 
moss itself. When approaching a nest in the former situation, 
I have seen the bird fly out hurriedly while I was yet many 
yards distant, and, being on the level ground above, of course 
out of sight. In these cases it is probable that the vibration 
of the peat under my footsteps was the cause of alarm. 
The nests vary considerably, not only in appearance, but in 
the nature of the materials of which they are composed. 
Every one that I have seen lias contained feathers. A nest 
found in a garden wall was constructed in the following man- 
ner; first there was a large mass of fibrous roots, moss, dea(] 
weeds, and hay, loosely spread upon the bottom of the crevice 
by way of a foundation ; upon this was a cup-shaped layer of 
smaller fibrous roots, and again one of fine roots intermixed 
with cow’s hair, upon which was another layer of similar 
materials, with the addition of about a third part of hay. 
Above this tliere was a distinct carefully wrought lining, in 
tliree layers, the first consisting of ])ieces of twine and carjiet- 
