RING OUZEL. 
213 
intruder away by well-feigned and real symptoms of distress. 
It is of a very shy nature, and if disturbed, which it easily 
is even from a covert, rises up to a considerable height, and 
often flies as much as half a mile before it alights. 
The Ring Ouzel is rather rapid in its flight, which is very 
little undulated, and if sojourning in districts where there 
are hedgerows, seems to have a habit, at least when dis¬ 
turbed, of flying in and out in half circles in its progress 
along a hedge, or the side of a wood. 
It feeds on insects, worms, and snails, and likewise on 
different fruits and seeds—those of the mountain ash, the 
bilberry, the juniper, the rowan, and the holly. When the 
young ones are fledged, they frequently descend to the 
gardens nearest to their native wilds, where they do considerable 
damage among cherries, raspberries, currants, plums, and 
gooseberries, and, where there are any, among grapes and 
various wall fruits. 
Its song is desultory but sweet—a few plaintive notes 
uttered in a clear and warbling whistle. Its alarm is sig¬ 
nified by a strong cry, resembling that of the Blackbird. 
Meyer says that its ordinary note resembles the syllable ‘tub.’ 
The nest is placed among the heather upon a ledge or in 
some hollow of the grey and hoary rock, whose weather-beaten 
front tells of many a cold and wintry blast, that has swept, 
age after age, over the wild and desolate moor or the barren 
mountain side. It is hidden more or less by a tuft of 
heath, the root of a tree, or a projection of the rock in 
which it is placed: those found in the more southerly counties 
were placed at a height of about five or six feet from the 
ground, in such a situation as a yew tree, or ivy-clad elm. 
It measures about seven inches in diameter, about three 
inches and a half in depth on the outside, and about two 
inches inside. It is composed of dried grasses, heather, stems, 
or stalks, thickly matted together, with here and there an 
occasional leaf: on the inside it is lined, according to some 
with mud, within which again is another lining of similar 
materials to those of which the outside is compacted. 
The eggs are pale greenish blue, sparingly freckled with 
pale purple and reddish brown markings, except at the larger 
end, where those obscurations are confluent, and entirely 
conceal the ground colour. They vary in the depth of the 
markings, some being much lighter, and some much darker 
than others. One has been noticed by Mr. A. Evans of a 
