ROCK AND WALL-BUILDING BIRDS. 
some projecting coping or ancient waterspout. On a founda- 
tion of sticks a quantity of straw is laid, and a lining of 
feathers and other softer materials ; here are deposited from 
four to seven eggs (fig. 22), of a broadly oval form, an inch 
and a half long and an inch hi diameter, of a pale greenish 
blue or bluish white, with small round spots of dark brown or 
purple at the larger end, laid about the middle of May. 
The Jer-Falcon never having been known to breed in this 
country, its nest is only known to us by description, and the 
eggs by imported specimens ; they are, in size and shape, like 
those of the domestic fowl, of a reddish brown, dashed over with 
irregular markings and spots of a darker shade. The peregrine 
falcon is becoming very rare with us, but breeds on many parts 
of our shelving rocky coasts, from the Isle of Wight to the 
Murray Frith, and at many intermediate stations. It is by 
no means particular as to its nest, and very commonly appro- 
priates one deserted by the raven, or some other bird, in which 
it lays its three or four eggs, of a deeper reddish brown than 
the jer -falcon ; two inches and an eighth in length, by an inch 
and three-quarters in diameter, blotched with a deeper brown 
and in larger blotches than the former. 
The elegant Falco JEsalon, or Merlin, haunts the heaths and 
moors which abound in the North of England and in Scot- 
land. Some authors say it builds a nest of sticks externally, 
thickly lined with wool, in the pine woods of Norway, which is 
at variance with the habits of the bird, as far as is known in 
this country, where it lays its four or five eggs in a hollow in 
the ground, without further preparation. Of the same reddish- 
brown with those of the peregrine and jer -falcon, but without 
the blotches, being slightly dotted over with greenish-black 
spots, the egg is about an inch and a half in length by an inch 
and a quarter in diameter. 
The Kestrel, which is the only falcon’s egg our space per- 
mits us to illustrate, is more widely diffused, and better known 
than any of the other hawks. Breeding in rocks, in some old 
crumbling ruins, or in the trunks of hollow trees, and gene- 
rally appropriating the deserted nest of the jackdaw or the 
magpie, it lays four eggs (fig. 19), smaller than any of those 
previously described, being only an inch and a half long and 
an inch and a quarter in breadth, but strongly resembling 
that of the peregrine falcon in colour and markings. The 
eggs vary from three to five, are of a broadly elliptical or 
roundish shape, of a pale reddish-orange, patched all over 
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