Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/540

510 The eggs are not very variable, five being a favourite number for a clutch; very rarely have I known so many laid as six. Mr. W.J. Horn is lucky in the possession of some nice specimens, while his cabinet also contains eggs of both the Lesser Whitethroat and Tree Pipit, which for beauty of colouring I have never seen equalled. Though I have remarked that Whitethroats' eggs are not very variable, as, for instance, in comparison with those of the Tree Pipit, it is notorious that their ground-colour runs through different shades of bluish white and pale green, and that some specimens are more boldly and elaborately marked with the typical wreath of light brown, violet grey, or olive green spots as the case may be, some of them underlying the shell, than others. One of the most peculiar-looking eggs I ever found was in a nest in a gooseberry-bush at Fronfeuno, near to Bala, in the spring of 1894. It was a single specimen, without shape or comeliness, and approximated more in colouring to the eggs of the Orphean Warbler than to those of the Whitethroat. The bird incubated it for a day or so, and then finally deserted its malformed abortion which proved to be yolkless.

Whitethroats have a great partiality for currants and raspberries, and in July and August they raid the bushes of my kitchen garden in considerable numbers, and, though I am always hearing that "the birds take the fruit so," I do not grudge it them. "Live and let live" is a good old-fashioned principle, and though Finches pilfer the newly-sown seeds, and, later in the year, Tits filch the peas, I deem myself amply repaid by the facilities they afford me for observing—amidst several other characteristic habits—their thievish propensities.