Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/33

Rh ten feet from the ground. The bird stayed about, so that I had no difficulty in identification." I have never known of a nest of this species in a bush, but St. John mentions a "low bush" as its ordinary site ('Sport in Moray,' p. 103); and I gather that the Rev. H.A. Macpherson regards a "stunted whin bush" as a not uncommon position ('Birds of Cumberland,' p. 3); and Mr. Howard Saunders says that "stunted bushes" are occasionally chosen. In our dales the Ring-Ouzel generally chooses as a nesting-site a corner in a precipitous rock, sometimes in an old quarry. It is usually impossible to see any vestige of the nest from below, and above it is generally screened from view by overhanging herbage.

Colour of Eggs.—As on one occasion I mistook a typical boldly marked egg of a Ring-Ouzel for that of a Blackbird, being misled by the nest (which was built of moss and placed on the top of a patch of bilberry), I can hardly object to Lord Lilford's statement ('Birds of Northamptonshire,' vol. i. p. 101) that the eggs of the Ring-Ouzel "very closely resemble some varieties of the Blackbird." It is quite true that eggs of the former bird may be found which are hardly distinguishable from those of the latter, and less rarely from those of the Missel-Thrush. I also possess eggs of the Song-Thrush which are very like a variety of Ring-Ouzel's. Altogether there are in my collection some two dozen varieties of these eggs, but in some cases they are not very distinct from one another. The typical egg has a ground colour of slightly greenish blue, rather paler than is usual in the Song-Thrush's egg. It is boldly marked with blotches of chestnut-red, and fainter ones of a dull purplish colour. A distinct variety has the ground colour evenly tinted with very pale reddish brown, marked similarly to the typical egg. In some varieties the ground colour is greener than in the typical egg; in some it is very pale indeed. In some the markings are very large and bold, in others they are reduced to small irregular spots or freckles the underlying marks often being a pale shade of chestnut-red, and not purplish at all. One variety is very curious. Apparently the ground colour is dirty white, but the whole surface of the egg is thickly covered with very fine freckles of rusty brown. In shape they are either sharply pointed at one end, long and bluntly pointed, perfectly oval, or almost spherical.