Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/145

 the shepherd, on account of certain bloody designs against his fleecy charge, whenever driven by hunger to the attack, makes his nest in the deepest retirement, in solitude the most inaccessible. He selects a leafless, sapless branch of some stunted tree, a mountain-birch or service, jutting out from the face of a perpendicular rock, and hanging over an abyss hundreds of fathoms deep, the bottom often beset with sharp and pointed rocks. It makes one shudder to think of a living creature being precipitated from the top; yet here the female Corbie sits secure, and far more fearless, in far less agitation of spirits, than if her nest were placed in a flowery meadow. The nest is constructed of the decayed stems of heather, skilfully and carefully wattled together with twigs of other trees. A layer of moss is next supplied to fill the interstices, and thus render the mass more compact; this layer is thickest at the bottom, and in places, where the outwork of heather has been made too slight, the inside is partially lined with sprigs of the fly-bent, but principally with wool. Here are deposited the eggs, and here the callow brood are fed and nourished, and kept dry and warm. The eggs are five, six, or seven in number, of a bluish colour, blotched with irregular spots of brown. The order in which they are deposited is scarcely ever seen, for it rarely happens that a human being can approach sufficiently near for that purpose. The young Corbies, however, are seldom permitted to escape; for the shepherd, seeking the spot, perilous though it be, smashes the eggs with stones hurled from above, and batters the nest to pieces. He sometimes postpones his