Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/33

Rh autumnal months, well hung and not too long before the fire, would run them both very close.

Touching the vexed point of the Redwing nesting in this country, I am aware that it has been reported to have done so—indeed, on more than one occasion in my own county—but, though such may have been the case, it is quite out of the question that the mere ipse dixit of, it may be, an anonymous correspondent to some paper should be accepted as authoritative on the point. Actual and absolute proof of its nest and eggs having been obtained in this country has not yet been forthcoming, I fancy, and until the birds are killed at the nest and the eggs taken, ornithologists will do well to receive with the fullest reserve all affirmative statements that have hitherto appeared on the subject. It is very easy to make an assertion; it is another matter to prove it. The writer has frequently been girded at as being too particular in his wish for indisputable evidence on sundry points connected with birds, but he maintains that it is a subject on which one cannot possibly be too particular. Only consider for a moment what distinguished modern writers on ornithology have done with a mass of flimsy and unsupported evidence relative to the appearance of this or that rare species in this or that part of the kingdom: why, they have rejected it as utterly unreliable; and had only a proper test been applied in the first instance to communications of the kind, ancient books on the subject of birds would have contained far less fiction.

However, to return to the Redwing. I have had its eggs from Norway, and they much resemble small varieties of those of the Blackbird, the ground colour being almost entirely hidden by tiny streaks, which are evenly distributed over the whole surface. It has a sweet pleasing twittering kind of song as I have heard it, but I am not at all sure that I have heard the real thing, for the reason supplied by the quotation from 'A Spring and Summer in Lapland.' "An Old Bushman" writes:—"Of all the northern songsters, perhaps the Redwing stands first on the list, and is with justice called the northern Nightingale, for a sweeter song I never wish to listen to." This is enthusiastic writing, which I can appreciate without, I regret, being in a position to endorse. I can never have heard the Redwing at its best.