DUNNOCK. Tol 
air’ of the north succeed a comparatively milder time, it 
chills the heart of the little warbler, and his strains are in 
consequence curtailed. Yet, on the other hand, Mr. Weir 
has heard the Dunnock singing regularly at night about 
eleven o’clock, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, even in 
the darkest evenings of autumn and winter, and when the 
weather was cold and frosty. Its ordinary note is a small 
cheep. The shuffling of the wings just spoken of, frequently 
accompanies its musical performances. It has been observed 
in confinement to imitate the notes of other kinds of birds 
kept with it, making a strange medley of all together. 
The nest is generally placed in hedges, low furze or other 
bushes, or shrubs, a few feet from the ground, but also in 
lack of these, in holes of walls, stacks of wood, in the ivy 
against a wall, and other similar places. The Rev. Charles 
Forge, of Driffield, records in the ‘Zoologist, pages 658-9, 
that he found one among the small branches of an elm 
tree, standing apart from any hedge. - It was placed close 
to the bole or trunk of the tree, at about ten feet from 
the ground. Exteriorly, it was composed of wheat straw, 
intermingled with small recently-dead twigs of the elm, to 
which the dried leaves were still attached. It had no other 
lining than the green moss commonly used by the Hedge- 
Chanter in the construction of its nest, and contained a single 
egg. One has been known built on a disused garden roller. 
An outhouse is sometimes made use of for the purpose. 
It is deep and well rounded, and from four and a half to 
five inches in diameter on the outside, and nearly two 
inches deep. It is made of small twigs and grass, lined 
with moss, and then with hair, grass, wool, or down, or any 
appropriate substances at hand. 
The eggs, which are sometimes seen so early as the beginning 
of April, are four or five, rarely six, though sometimes, it is 
said, seven in number, and of a very elegant greenish blue 
colour, with a rather glossy surface. Archibald Hepburn, Esq., 
records in the ‘Zoologist,’ page 431, his having seen an egg 
of this species, which was thrown out of the nest by the 
parents, and was of a bluish white colour, mottled and 
speckled with light brown; it was much rounder than the 
usual shape, and was empty inside. 
Incubation lasts eleven days, and two broods are often 
reared in the year; preparations for one being made about 
the middle of March, and for the latter at the beginning 
