Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/409

Rh boast so much neatness of architecture as birds. The nest of the common chaffinch (Fringilla cœlebs) for example, which everybody has seen and more or less admired, is a perfect model of elegance. Like the architects themselves, it possesses this quality without being adorned with any superfluous ornament. Moss, lichens, wool, and a few hairs and feathers, are the only materials of which it is constructed; and the situation in which it is placed, as well as the disposition of the nest there, are admirable. In selecting a place to fix its nest in, the chaffinch usually prefers a branch of the elm, oak or elder-tree, close at its union with the trunk. We have frequently found them, however, in a hawthorn, or on the pendulous bough of a silver fir, and even in apple and pear trees which were trained against a wall. Professor Rennie mentions finding one in a closely clipped privet hedge, and another in a thick row of hollies; but these instances he considers as rather singular. Perhaps the most singular situation for such a nest is one noticed by Cowper, and quoted by him as the origin of his verses entitled "A Tale," which he tells us is "no fiction." "In a block or pulley near the head of the mast of a gabert, now lying at the Broomielaw, there is a chaffinch's nest and four eggs. The nest was built while the vessel lay at Greenock, and was followed to Glasgow by both birds. Though the block is occasionally lowered for the inspection of the curious, the birds have not forsaken it. The male, however, visits the nest but seldom, while the hen never leaves it, but when she descends to the hulk for food." An instance, by no means so curious as the above, but of no frequent occurrence, fell under my notice in the spring of 1836. While searching amongst a row of willows, which overhang a pretty large stream, in Mid Lothian, for the nest of a water-hen (Gallinula chloropus), I stumbled upon that of a chaffinch, fixed on a branch stretching across, and only elevated about five feet from the water. It was composed of the usual materials, excepting that it was entirely destitute of feathers; but their place was comfortably supplied by a superabundant quantity of hair and wool. Why the bird had been attracted to the rivulet I am unable to comprehend, as the neighbourhood is everywhere intersected with its proper retreats.

A still more unusual locality for a nest was once chosen by a ringdove (Columba Palumbus). This bird had fixed its nest in a low furze-bush, growing upon the slope of a considerable clay bank. The twigs with which the nest was formed, were in some places curiously