Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/92

84 of large trees. We have seen nests often in the first cleft of detached chestnuts. Nests are also common in Scotch-fir plantations, where they are easily found. Ground nests are never numerous, and they are always built about precipices.

The nest is about the size of the thrush’s, but shallower, the principal material of which is the stalks, not the blades, of dead bent-grass; and the nest is sometimes betrayed by the protruding of some of the grass-stalks from the cleft in which it is placed. The inside is made of soft grass and hair.

We have at present an egg and a young fieldfare, both taken from the same nest, in Roxburghshire, in the beginning of May last. The bird is now nearly full-grown, and is very tame, perching occasionally on our head, to which he flies of his own accord. He at times shows unmistakable symptoms of pleasure when being spoken to in a kindly manner—gently fluttering his wings and faintly giving his fledgling chirrup. When hungry, he now utters the harsh chirr of the old bird.

We have shot fieldfares in May and June in Berwickshire, and in July, 1860, we saw numbers of them in the uplands of Peeblesshire. We have seen them in all the summer months in Roxburghshire, and in Northumberland they are resident natives. These birds also attack the wild cherries every season, generally about the beginning of August, in a garden well known to us in a retired part of one of these counties.

The following may be noted as the aristocracy of the regular, frequent, and occasional visitors of these localities: the osprey, seagull, wild goose, goosander, shovellerduck, teal, goldenplover, ringplover, pewit, curlew, woodcock, hoopoe, cuckoo, landrail, and kingfisher. There is also a heronry at the base of “dark Ruberslaw,” in Roxburghshire, and herons are numerous, the supply of minnows and trouts in the brawling streams of the Border yielding abundance of food for them. J. S.