Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/46

20 the sallow, which the parent birds must have brought from some considerable distance, as no sallows are growing near the spot. The materials of which this nest was composed made it very conspicuous, and, what is more remarkable, the bird must have built it at a time when workmen were erecting an orchard house within a few yards of the bush; but we well know that birds as a rule are much tamer, so to speak, during nidification, than they are at any other time. I may remark that although these nests were built in the furze outside the garden, yet a much larger number were to be found within its boundaries, and these were constructed in almost any suitable place. The furze dwellers had possibly found the locality favourable for food, but not wishing, or not being allowed, to inconvenience their neighbours by building in their midst, they had availed themselves of the nearest suitable situation. I have never found a Greenfinch's nest in the furze upon the open heath, as I have those of the Linnet, and think the Greenfinch generally chooses a higher situation for its nest than the Linnet. As I had frequent opportunities of observing the Greenfinches in question, I may throw some little light upon "the time of day at which birds lay their eggs" (Zool. 2nd ser. 5115, 5161), and I can quite believe that the late Dr. Saxby intended writing and not  These greenfinches always laid, as far as I was able to observe, in the morning, between 7 and 12 o'clock, generally from 8 to 10. When a boy at school I well recollect finding the nest of a Goldfinch in a high hedge: it had previously been found by some of my school-mates, and each was anxious to obtain the first egg. Two or three consecutive mornings I rose soon after daybreak, in anticipation of becoming the possessor of the much-coveted prize, ignorantly supposing that the bird laid during the night, or at very early morning. On the fourth morning an egg was laid between eight and nine o'clock, after I had waited some four or five hours for its appearance; I took this egg, and on the following morning the bird laid another about the same time, but she forsook the nest after the second egg was taken. One evening, in my rambles about the meadows, I came across the nest of a Reed Bunting containing two eggs; the following morning, having to pass near the nest, and seeing a Cuckoo fly out somewhere near the spot, curiosity led me to look at the nest again, and I found that besides the two eggs of the previous evening, one of the Cuckoo's was therein. This was before ten o'clock, so I reasonably conjecture that the Cuckoo must have laid that morning.— (Ringwood, Hants).

—I may add my mite to the observations of Messrs. Boyes and Gurney upon this subject (Zool. 2nd ser. 5163) as follows:—A few seasons ago, during March, I visited the heaths in this neighbourhood for the capture of the moth called Pachycnemia hippocastanaria, and in a fir-wood through which I passed I had seen one or more of the Owls in question on several occasions. One evening in