MISSEL THRUSH. 
There is very little difference in the plumage of the sexes, but the 
female is not quite so bright in colours. 
The Missel Thrush is by no means plentiful in England, and seems 
to be less so in winter. It begins to sing in January, if the weather is 
mild, but ceases so soon as the thermometer sinks below forty degrees. 
About the middle of March it makes a nest in the fork of some tree, 
especially such as are covered with white moss, particularly apple-trees ; 
frequenting orchards more than any other place in the spring, and 
never building in a bush. 
* The ingeniously constructed nest of the Missel Thrush, has as usual 
been little attended to by systematic ornithologists. It builds,” says 
Willughby, a nest as a jay, commonly with rotten twigs on the outside, 
and the inside with dead grass, hay, or moss, which he pulls from trees.” 
They construct both the inside and the outside, according to Buffon, with 
herbage, leaves, and moss, especially the white moss, and their nest re- 
sembles more that of the blackbird than of the other thrushes, except 
its being lined with bedding. “ The nest,” says Atkinson, ‘‘is composed of 
lichen and coarse grass, and lined with wool.” They might as well have 
described an orange as composed of the rind and the pips ; or the Missel 
Thrush itself as made up of feathers and stomach, without taking any 
notice of its bones and flesh ; for it is not only a basket-maker, but a 
mason ; and after it has reared a rough scaffolding of the withered 
stems of plants, dry grass, and moss, which are placed in great quantity, 
and with little art, it constructs a substantial wall of clay, of which 
none of the authors just quoted take the least notice, and we are thence 
entitled to infer that none of them had seen or examined the nest they 
undertook to describe. The masonry is not much better finished than 
the scaffolding’, being inferior perhaps to that of the blackbird, and de- 
cidedly so to that of the song thrush ( Turdus musicus) ; but the rude- 
ness of the scaffolding, and the clay walls built upon it, is amply com- 
pensated by the ingenious basket-work by which these are subsequently 
concealed. The nest itself is usually placed in the fork of a tree, such 
as the pine in wilder districts, or an apple-tree in an orchard, the chief 
condition being that it should be plentifully surrounded with the larger 
leafy lichens, such as Borrera furfuracea, Peltidea scutata, Ramalina 
fraxinea, 8^c., Acharius. Without detaching these from the trees, 
the bird artfully interweaves them into the contour of the nest, so as 
partly to conceal the basket-work of fine hay, which is wrought in at 
the same time, and interwoven with much nicety, both around the 
brim, and also over the clay, on the outside of the nest farthest from 
the tree ; the lichens and other moss have only one of their ends 
