Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/230

204 Considerable stress has been laid on the fact that Whinchats study the art of concealment when constructing their nests, or, perhaps I should more correctly say, when choosing a site for the same; but that such cannot be the invariable rule is, I think, made evident by the very open situations in which I have found them. On more than one occasion have I discovered a nest mainly owing to first having caught a passing glimpse of the glossy greenish-blue eggs reposing in it. I have known nests in various situations: in grass fields, in the banks of roadside ditches, in coarse grass on a hillside, on railway embankments, and at the bottom of gorse bushes on the upland wastes. There is no doubt that when built in this last-mentioned position the nest is exceedingly well hidden, and not likely to be easily discovered unless you chance to beat the bird out of her recess, or detect her quitting it as she hurriedly flies forth at the signal of danger from her mate. If the eggs are on the point of being hatched, the hen will sit uncommonly close; but if they have only been recently laid, the alarm-notes have the desired effect of scaring her away immediately.

During the period of incubation the male bird keeps a vigilant and incessant outlook, and gives warning of the approach of an intruder by sharply uttering the notes utac, utac, and there is no more convenient eminence for observing this habit than the top of a railway embankment, the cock bird, as a rule, being perched, sentinel-like, on the telegraph wires. My wife found two nests of this species on a grassy slope just outside Scarborough in the summer of 1892, each containing six eggs, which is the usual number of the clutch. There was nothing remarkable in the mere discovery of the nests beyond the fact that both were built within a few yards not only of each other, but of the old nests of the preceding year. Yet another instance of the tendency of birds to return annually to their erstwhile haunts. One of the nests I found by first noticing the eggs, was placed in an open bank in the middle of a field adjoining the river Lugg, in Herefordshire; it was the sort of situation a Redbreast might have chosen, but almost too exposed, I should have thought, for even this confidential species. Another nest was placed in a grass meadow that had been "laid" for hay, and could be seen from the footpath that bisected it.