128 CHIFF CHAFF. 
of earth. Mr. Henry Doubleday has found one at a height 
of two feet from the ground, in some fern; and Mr. Hewitson 
mentions another, which was built in some ivy against a 
garden wall, at a like elevation. Occasionally the nest is 
placed in a row of peas, or a bed of ground-growing wild 
plants. 
The eggs, usually seven in number, are more than ordinarily 
rounded at the larger end, and pointed at the smaller. They 
are hatched in thirteen days: they do not vary much, and 
are of a white ground colour, with very small dots and spots 
of blackish red or purple brown, chiefly at the thicker end, 
which they sometimes surround in the way of a zone or a 
belt. Mr. Neville Wood saw a nest which contained five eggs 
of the usual colour, and the sixth pure white. The shell is 
very thin, and but little polished. The eggs are laid towards 
the middle or end of May, and the young birds are fledged 
about the middle of June: they quit the nest early. 
Incubation lasts thirteen days, and the male occasionally ’ 
relieves the female at her post. Two broods are sometimes 
reared in the season. 
Male; weight, nearly three drachms; length, four inches 
and a half; bill, dark brown, the edges of both and the lower 
one at the base, pale yellowish red, the base beset with bristles; 
there is a pale yellowish brown mark over the eye, more or 
less obscure, and between the eye and the bill the space is 
grey: a narrow circle of the former colour surrounds the eyes; 
iris, dusky. Head, crown, neck on the back, and nape, greenish 
ash-colour, or brownish olive, the green almost disappearing 
in the building-season; chin, throat, and breast, pale dull 
yellowish white, the yellow colour chiefly in indistinct streaks, 
and also nearly disappearing in the building-time; back, 
greenish ash-colour, or brownish olive, the edges of the feathers 
paler than the remainder. 
The wings, which extend to the width of six inches, have 
the first quill short, the second a quarter of an inch shorter 
than the third, which is of the same length as the fifth, and 
rather longer than the fourth, the former two being the 
longest in the wing, and the seventh a little longer than the 
second, which in some specimens does not exceed even the 
eighth; the under surface of the wings is grey; greater and 
lesser wing coverts, also greenish ash-colour or brownish olive, 
duller in the summer; primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries, 
rather darker brown, the edges of the last-named rather 
