58 WHINCHAT. 
pillars, worms, and small mollusca; also some say on berries. 
The first-named are sometimes seized in the air, the bird 
watching for them from its station on some bush or twig, 
to which it returns after each successful sally. 
Its song is agreeable, sweet, and melodious, though desultory, 
and is uttered from the top of some hedge or bush, or while 
hovering in the air over it. One brought up from the nest 
by Mr. Sweet, used to sing the whole day through, and 
very often at night, imitating the notes of the Whitethroat, 
Redstart, Willow Warbler, Missel Thrush, and Nightingale. 
The ordinary note is a ‘chack,’ or ‘chat;’ also when alarmed, 
a ‘tick,’ ‘tick,’ resembling the sound produced by striking 
two pebbles together, and, says Macgillivray, a ‘peep, tick, 
tick, tick, tick;’ each syllable repeated from one to six times, 
but rarely so often, and accompanied by a slight upraising 
of the wings, and a shake of the tail. 
The nest is placed in the lower part of a gorse bush, a 
few inches above the ground, where the thorns and stalks are 
dying off, so that the materials of the nest assimilate in 
appearance to the situation in which it is placed, and it is 
thus the rather screened from observation. More frequently 
it is placed in the grass at the foot of it, and has been 
known in a hedge adjoining a road. Where there are no 
gorse bushes, it is placed in the rough grass in a pasture field, 
or in a meadow. It is loosely built of stalks of grass and 
moss, and is lined with finer portions of the former; a layer 
of wool has been known between the two, and occasionally 
some hair or leaves: it measures six inches across, and two 
and a half internally. It is very carefully concealed, and ~ 
extremely difficult to find; the bird approaching it stealthily 
by a labyrinthine track. 
The eggs are of a glossy bluish green colour, with some 
minute specks, and sometimes, though very rarely, of dull 
reddish brown; they are five or six in number, usually the 
latter, very rarely seven. 
The young are hatched towards the end of May, and two 
broods are produced in the season, the first being abroad from 
the middle of June to the beginning of July, and the second 
in August. 
Edwin Cottingham, Esq. has favoured me with a drawing 
of the nest and eggs. 
Male; weight, about four drachms and a half; length, five 
inches to five and a quarter; bill, polished black; a brown 
