"wood lake:. 
9 
bush or tuft of grass, or at the foot of a tr«e; occasionally 
under the shelter of a fence or paling, or on a hank; one 
has been known on the trunk of a fallen oak, on the topmost 
bough of which, perhaps, in previous years when it still stood 
in all its pride, the bird had warbled forth her strains, and 
now Avhen levelled with the earth, she ‘could not bid the 
spot adieu,’ but sang a daily requiem over the fallen remains. 
The outside materials are small roots, grass, and sometimes 
moss, and the lining smaller grasses, with occasionally a little 
hair. 
The eggs, which are laid at the end of March or beginning 
of April, and also in July, there seeming to be two broods 
in the year, are four or five in number, of a pale reddish 
white, or yellowish brown ground colour, spotted and speckled 
with dull reddish brown, or dark grey, or brownish grey, 
with sometimes a few irregular dusky lines at the larger end. 
Male; weight, about eight drachms; length, a little more 
than six inches; bill, dark brown on the upper part, the 
lower one and the base of the upper one, pale yellowish brown; 
iris, dark brown: over it is a pale brown or yellowish white 
streak. The feathers about the base of the bill are bristly 
at the tips; a sort of crest is formed by the feathers on the 
top of the head, which are of a light brown colour, streaked 
with dark brown; neck on the back, yellowish brown, on the 
sides, reddish; nape, brown, streaked with dark brownish black; 
chin and throat, pale yellowish brown, with a reddish tinge; 
breast, pale yellowish brown, with a few small streaked spots 
of dark brown on the middle part; back, light reddish brown 
on the upper part, brown on the lower, dashed with dark 
brownish black near the tips of the feathers. 
The wings expand to the width of one foot and half an 
inch, and extend to within rather less than an inch of the 
end of the tail; the first feather is very short, the second 
not quite so long as the third or the fourth, which latter 
is the longest in the wing; the fifth nearly as long as the 
second: Yarrell gives the third as the longest. Greater wing 
coverts, dark brown, tipped with pale brown; lesser wing 
coverts, dark brown, some of them tipped with pale brown, 
both making two rather conspicuous bands across the wings; 
primaries and secondaries, dusky brown, edged and tipped with 
light reddish brown; tertiaries, dark brown, edged with light 
brown. The tail, which is short, of twelve feathers, square 
at the tip, has the outer feather on each side pale brown, 
