UC-NRLF

B 3 272 22b

CANCELLED
B. M

BIOLOGY LJBRARY

AN OSPREY'S EYRIE AND ITS OWNER.

B. -

x~ \

OUR RARER BRITISH

BREEDING BIRDS

THEIR NESTS, EGGS, AND SUMMER HAUNTS

BY

RICHARD KEARTON, F.Z.S.

AUTHOR OF " BRITISH BIRDS' NESTS," " WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA.,

ETC. ETC.

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

C. KEARTON

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED

LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK $ MELBOURNE

1899

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BIOLOGt
UBRARY

BIOLOGY LIBRARY

PREFACE.

THIS little volume is to be regarded as a supple-
ment to our former work on " British Birds' Nests:
How, Where, and When to Find and Identify
Them," published in 1895. Since that time, my
brother and I have missed no opportunity of
collecting photographs representing the nests, eggs
or breeding-places of such birds as we had not
up to that time been fortunate enough to figure
by means of the camera, and at the request of
a numerous band of ornithological friends, we now
publish our harvest of sun-pictures and informa-
tion pertaining thereto. Its title is suggested by
the obvious fact that the nests we were unable to
include in the former work, had been chiefly in-
accessible to us at that time because more rare.
Its supplementary character is our excuse for
including under such a title, several which cannot
be called rare, and are even common. Such find
a place simply to complete, as far as possible, our
list, and as not appearing in the former collection.
Although the results of our labours may not
loom large to the eye when compressed within
the two covers of a book, some notion may
perhaps be gathered of what it costs to collect the
materials for such a work, when it is mentioned

M856£0

vi PREFACE.

that the mere railway and steamboat travelling
involved totals up to something like ten thousand
miles, to say nothing of many and many a long
and fruitless tramp across bog and fell. But even
yet we have not been able altogether to accom-
plish our hope and intention of photographing
the nest, eggs, or breeding-place of every bird
propagating its species within the British archi-
pelago ; and I need hardly repeat that we shall
be grateful for any help in finding specimens of
the few remaining to be figured by my brother's
camera.

A great deal of our work has been of an ex-
ceedingly pleasant nature; but I regret to say that
such of it as concerns a few of our rarer breeding
birds, gallantly striving year after year to maintain
themselves in their old haunts, with a persistence
only known to inherited love, has often been of
the saddest character. When, in spite of all the
protective legislation devised by the wisdom and
experience of British statesmen and ornithologists,
it is possible for one of our very rarest birds to be
robbed of its eggs for ten years in unbroken suc-
cession, and collectors boast that with a bottle of
whisky and a kettle of hot water they can possess
themselves of any specimen they desire, the present
condition of things is manifestly hopeless. Eggs
protected by law are still openly hunted for in
the broad light of day by children, young men
and old men, maidens and white-haired dames ;
and, incredible as it may sound, even waited for
for hours together, morning after morning, until

PREFACE. vii

they are dropped into the nest by their layers.
When the eggs of any species reach an at-
tractively high figure in dealers' catalogues, it is
a gloomy day for its slender band of representa-
tives ; but what shall we say of the prospects when
a presumably rich collector deliberately places a pre-
mium upon its destruction, by giving 100 per cent,
more than the recognised market price, which was
all that he was asked for a clutch of eggs ?

The Wild Bird Protection laws are very like
a beautiful padlock and chain, hanging useless on
a widely-opened stable-door which it is nobody's
business to lock ; and I have no hesitation in
saying that the only real good done in the United
Kingdom in the way of bird preservation, has been
accomplished by private effort. As such private
enterprise has now abundantly demonstrated in the
case of the Great Skuas, in Unst, where the birds
have doubled their numbers, instead of dwindling
away to extinction as was predicted, the Eider
Ducks at the Fame Islands, and the various
species, including the Lesser Tern, at Wells, in
Norfolk, absolute personal protection on the spot
is the great desideratum. Further, I am per-
suaded that nearly all true collectors (i.e. men
who will not own a single egg they have not
taken and properly identified themselves) would
help rather than hinder any really practical
attempt at protection. I have been told by some
that they are influenced by reflections of the
following character, when they find a rare bird's
nest: — "Well, if I don't take this clutch, Brown

viii PREFACE.

is coming this way next week, and he will."
And, without question, this is actually what
happens. On one occasion my brother and I in-
duced an exceedingly careful and genuine collector
to leave a clutch of rare eggs, of a variety which
I know would have much enhanced the value
of his cabinet ; but a day or two afterwards
another collector chanced to pass that way, and
secured them without let or hindrance, although
they were under the supposed double protection
of an Act of Parliament and the guardianship of
the owner of the land, who, however, had no
watcher of any kind near.

As a mere matter of fact, instead of the law
helping to preserve our rarer breeding birds, it
would, if put in motion against an offender,
actually help forward their destruction. Legal
procedure would mean publicity; and, once a place
now only known to a few became notorious to the
many, it would attract a crowd of people who
would, without the restraining influence of a
watcher, soon work havoc with the subject of
litigation, especially if there was anything to be
made out of it. Anyone doubting this need only
turn to the case of the slaughtering pot-hunters
who were prosecuted for the damage they did
to the sea-fowl breeding on Grasholme Island ;
I have been told by several Welsh naturalists
that they are sorry action was ever instituted, as
it has done incalculable harm to the birds by
advertising the island, and thus attracting other
evil-doers.

PREFACE. ix

Here I may say that while we have, wherever
we thought it would add to the interest and
value of the work, followed the advice of our
friend Dr. Bowdler Sharpe and given a picture
illustrative of the breeding-haunt of a bird meriting
such form of treatment, these additional illustra-
tions (which naturally pertain to our rarer birds),
whilst being absolutely faithful, avoid as far
as possible all chances of identification. In the
text, too, I have carefully refrained from supplying
such information as would be calculated to in-
crease a mischief already sufficiently acute and
disastrous.

Eespectable dealers in natural history specimens
have, I believe, very little sympathy with egg-
collectors of the mere bric-a-brac order, and some
of them, I am delighted to be able to say, care a
good deal for the rarer breeding birds. Not long
ago I heard of one W7ell-known professional natur-
alist in the West of England absolutely refusing
to entertain an offer of some rare eggs, which he
knew to be under the supposed protection of an
Act of Parliament, and which he had every reason
to imagine were British-collected.

Whilst fully recognising the immense value,
from an educational point of view, of a collection
of stuffed birds, especially when set up writh
the life-like actuality of South Kensington, it is
difficult to understand why, from a purely national
one, we have never given any practical atten-
tion to the effective preservation of the infinitely
more interesting and precious living creatures

x PREFACE.

themselves. Broadly speaking, all wild birds are
the property of the State as species, and no man
has the right to kill or rob the last representatives
of a single one in danger of extermination. Modern
conditions of life seem to have rendered it neces-
sary that the same power that houses and takes
such excellent care of our dead birds for the
edification of the public, should also make some
practical effort to conserve such of our living ones
as are in danger of banishment. In the first
place, a steadily growing interest in British birds
and their habits amongst all classes of the com-
munity, has established a claim to some small
national expenditure in order to protect a source
of pleasure to the many, against the wanton
rapacity or thoughtlessness of the few. And in
the second, our islands are so small and travelling
facilities so great, as to enable nearly all who
take an intelligent interest in our country's birds
to visit even the rarest of them in their native
haunts — living, loving, and labouring at home
amidst their natural surroundings.

I would humbly suggest that instead of print-
ing and posting lists, pretending to protect birds
that do not in many cases need protection at all,
we should select a dozen species, admitted by a
committee of practical ornithologists to be most
in danger, and afford them effective personal pro-
tection daring the whole of the breeding season,
by placing reliable watchers night and day upon
their nesting-grounds.

Sportsmen are often the gratuitous recipients of

PREFACE. xi

a good deal of ignorant abuse in regard to the
destruction of our rarer breeding birds. I know
some who very laudably preserve Golden Eagles,
Peregrine Falcons, Buzzards, and Eavens on their
property, at the cost of a considerable amount of
game, without saying a word about it to anyone.
We often hear a good deal about the destruction of
the first -named bird, which, unlike its scarcer
neighbour, the White -Tailed Eagle, is really in
no danger at all. As a matter of fact, the Golden
Eagle is now highly valued on many deer forests
in Scotland for services rendered. It has a fond-
ness for preying upon blue hares, which', when
too numerous, render themselves an unmitigated
nuisance to the sportsman by giving the alarm all
too soon to his ever- watchful quarry. The majority
of sportsmen are good field naturalists, and I feel
sure that very few of them would be unwilling to
allow a really rare predatory bird its natural tithe
of weaklings, if approached in a proper spirit. I
would commend those who so roundly abuse sports-
men and their servants for the loss of a number
of predatory birds, that are often whitewashed in
ignorance of their true character, to a study of
another side of the account, namely — the thou-
sands and thousands of our sweetest song-birds
and their eggs and young, saved every year by a
wholesome dread of the man in velveteen.

I am, however, sorry to say that some game-
keepers are mischievous from zeal, ignorance, or
inquisitiveness. Only the other day an old watcher
laughingly admitted to me that he did not know

xii PREFACE.

that the Green Plover and Lapwing were one and
the same bird, and I have knowledge of some of
the younger generation shooting rare birds merely
to find out what they were.

Although the damage done by boys is of little
moment, so far as the great majority of our rarer
birds are concerned, that done near large towns and
in thickly-populated districts, where even our com-
monest species, with few exceptions, cannot be
spared, is terrible to contemplate. Something
requires to be done to humanise our little country
urchins, the majority of whom cannot tolerate the
sight of anything so beautiful as a bird's nest and
eggs. From a fairly extended experience, I have
no hesitation in affirming that for one country lad
who takes a clutch of eggs to blow, preserve, and
study, there are fifty who take them for the
merely wanton pleasure of destroying something
beautiful beyond their powers of appreciation.
Besides breaking eggs and doing helpless nestlings
to death, some of them are guilty of the unspeak-
able cruelty of actually barring up birds sitting on
their nests in hollow trees with stones, and con-
signing the faithful creatures to a living tomb. I
would much like to see a really interesting and
well-illustrated school reading-book devoted entirely
to British Natural History, and the elder boys
taken out once a month and put through a lesson
in field observation, binoculars in hand.

Our friend Dr. Forbes, Curator of the Natural
History Museum, Liverpool, recently suggested to
my brother the desirableness of giving, whenever

PREFACE. xiii

possible, the scale of a photographic reproduction
beneath it. This hint we regard as valuable,
especially in regard to illustrations containing nests
and eggs, and we have every reason to hope that
it will be appreciated.

We have to express our grateful thanks to the
following gentlemen for valuable assistance rendered
in the preparation of this work : — Sir Arthur John
Campbell-Orde ; Cameron of Lochiel ; Mr. J. Whit-
aker, of Mansfield ; Mr. E. J. Ussher, of Cappagh ;
Eev. M. C. H. Bird, of Stalham ; Dr. Herbert
Langton, of Brighton ; Dr. J. Salter, of Aberyst-
with ; Mr. Lawrence Edmondston, of Baltasound ;
Mr. H. H. Mackenzie, of Balelone ; Mr. J. T.
Proud, of Bishop Auckland ; Mr. J. Paterson, of
Great Yarmouth ; Mr. W. A. Dutt, of Lowestoft ;
Mr. W. Graveson, of Hertford; Mr. C. Snell and
Mr. W. J. Eoberts, of Torquay, and many other
bird-lovers throughout the country.

In conclusion, I very sincerely hope that all
who can will do something towards saving our
rarer British breeding birds from extinction. They,
and not mere accidental visitors to our shores,
are of real importance. Try to save the few
species most in danger, and keep a watchful eye
on the reduction of others that are from some
cause or other on the decline ; for once a bird
drops below a certain point of rarity, the premium
upon its skin and eggs appears to seal its doom.
Let us not forget that we all owe posterity a
debt, and that the deliberate doing of anything
calculated to lessen its pleasures is a wicked

xiv PREFACE.

responsibility. Let us remember that, as time
goes on, the struggle for existence is likely to
become keener and keener, and our future men
and women will require to turn more and more to
Nature and her children for health and recreation.

KICHARD KEARTON.

CATERHAM VALLEY, SURREY.
October, 1899.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Osprey's Eyrie and its Owner Frontispiece

Bearded Tit, Home of 115

Bearded Tit's Nest and Eggs 117

Blackcap's Nest and Eggs 3

Black Guillemot's Breeding Hole 41

Black-Throated Diver's Nest and Eggs . 19

Black-Throated Diver's Breeding Haunt . . . . . . .19

Capercaillie's Nest and Eggs 9

Chough's Breeding Cave 11

Cole Tit's Nest and Eggs 119

Cole Tit going to Nest 119

Common Buzzard's Nest and Eggs 7

Common Skua's Nest and Eggs 107

Common Skua Preparing to Attack 107

Corn Bunting's Nest and Eggs 5

Corn-crake's Nest and Eggs '. . .15

Crested Tit's Nesting Site 123

Cross-bill's Nest and Eggs 17

Dabchick's Nest (Covered) 39

Dabchick's Nest (Uncovered) . 39

Fork-Tailed Petrel's Nesting Burrow and Egg .... 75

Fulmar Petrel Sitting on Egg 77

Fulmar Petrel's Egg 77

Garden AVarbler's Nest and Eggs 129

Golden Plover's Nest and Eggs . 85

Goldfinch's Nest and Eggs 31

Goosander's Nesting Ho'e 33

Grasshopper Warbler's Nest and Eggs 131

Great Crested Grebe's Nest and Eggs .35

Green Woodpecker's Nesting Hole . .143

Hawfinch's Nest and Eggs 51

Hen Hai-rier's Nest and Eggs 43

Jay's Nest and Eggs 53

Kentish Plover's Eggs 39

Kite, Ancient Home of 55

Kite's Nest 57

xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Lesser Redpoll's Nests 93

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker's Nest 145

Lesser Tern's Eggs 113

Long-Eared Owl's Nest 65

Manx Shearwater's Nesting Hole 103

Marsh Harrier's Nest 45

Marsh Harrier's Breeding Haunt 45

Marsh Tits and Nesting Site 125

Montagu Harrier's Nest and Eggs 49

Nuthatch, Nesting Hole of 59

Peregrine Falcon's Eyrie and Eggs 25

Petrels, Home of the, The Doon, St. Kilda 79

Pied Fly-catcher's Nest and Eggs 26

Pied Fly-catcher's Nesting Site 27

Ptarmigan at Home .......... 91

Red-Necked Phalarope's Nest and Eggs 81

Red-Necked Phalarope at Home 84

Redshank's Nest and Eggs 95

Redshank's Breeding Haunt 95

Reed Warbler's Nest 135

Rock Dove's Nest and Egg 99

Shag and Nest 101

Short-Eared Owl, Home of the .67

Short-Eared Owl's Nest and Eggs 69

Siskin's Nest and Eggs 105

Tawny Owl's Eggs and Nest 71

Tawny Owl, Young 149

Tree Sparrow's Nesting Site . .111

Water Rail's Nest and Eggs 139

Whimbrel's Nest and Eggs 141

White-Tailed Eagle's -Nesting Site 21

Wood Warhler's Nest and Young 137

Wryneck's Nesting Site 147

Yellow Wagtail's Nest and Eggs 127

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING

BIRDS, :::.:::: ,vr-

BLACKCAP,

THE Blackcap is a bird I always associate with a
favourite old Surrey orchard beside the placid river
Mole, where I first heard its wild sweet song, and
saw its nest and eggs, years and years ago. Although
pretty generally distributed, there are many dis-
tricts in which I have neither seen nor heard it,
in spite of the fact that they appeared to furnish
suitable conditions of cover, water, and so forth.
It breeds sparingly in certain parts of Scotland
and Ireland, and throughout suitable districts of
Wales, and is a lover of small woods and spinnies
with plenty of undergrowth, shrubberies, old
orchards, and gardens, and bits of waste land
with plenty of brambles, nettles, and bushes near
to some sluggish stream.

Its nest is composed of straws, fibrous roots,
and dead grass, often intermixed with cobwebs,
and is lined with hair. It is a slight structure
placed at varying heights of from two to ten or
twelve feet from the ground, amongst briars, thick
hedgerows, brambles, nettles, gooseberry, and other
small bushes. Our illustration was secured at
Kainsworth Lodge, Nottinghamshire.

The eggs of the Blackcap number five or six,
and are subject to considerable variation in ground
colour and markings. One type is greyish- white,
B

2 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

suffused with huffish-brown, and blotched, spotted,
and marbled with dark brown ; another, faint brick-
red marked with a darker tint of the same colour
and reddish-brown ; whilst a third kind is said
tQcbe faintr jblue,, marked with yellowish-brown and
gffeyy Soirte ;* specimens are indistinguishable from
.those c of ..the Garden Warbler, but a sight of the
^Y^i^lSififefin^ females of either species will easily
settle any doubts in regard to correct identity.

BUNTING, CORN.

NOWHEEE have I met with the Corn Bunting half
so numerously as in the Outer Hebrides, where
the species may be fairly described as abundant.
Wherever there is a crofter's hut and a bit of
cultivated land in some of the islands, such as
North Uist, there, sure enough, will be a pair of
these sober-coloured, easy-going birds. During
the breeding season the male may be seen for
hours together every day sitting on some coign
of vantage wearisomely iterating his weak, squeak-
ing, unvaried song, which sounds to me some-
thing like pit-pit, cliizzy-cliizzy chea-ea-ea, and
becomes very monotonous when forced upon the
ears of the listener for any considerable time.

Upon being approached whilst sitting on a
wall or other eminence, the bird seems loth to
summon sufficient energy to move, and when it
does so, often goes away with both legs hanging
down, as if too idle to gather them up.

One authority describes the species as most
abundant in the southern counties of England,
but, with all due deference to him, I do not think

BLACKCAP'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

4 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

the Western Isles can be beaten, and I have knocked
about both parts freely in search of materials for
my books.

The Corn Bunting makes its nest, on or very
near the ground, amongst growing corn, coarse
grass, clover, peas, on banks, in a low bush, at
the foot of a hedge, and in other similar situations.
It is built with coarse hay or grass stems, straw,
and lined with fibrous roots, fine grass, and occa-
sionally hair. Our illustration was secured in the
south of Ireland.

The eggs number from four to six, and their
ground colour varies from pale buff to dull pur-
plish-white, spotted, blotched, and streaked with
purplish-brown of varying intensity, and under-
lying markings of grey. Taking into considera-
tion their large size, situation of the nest, and the
ease with which their lazy, clumsy-looking owner
may be seen, there should be no difficulty about
identification.

BUZZARD, COMMON.

WHILST being far from common in the general
acceptance of the term, I do not think I should
be justified in describing this bird as rare, for I
have seen two pairs on the wing at once in
Wales, where my brother has photographed the
nests of several both in cliffs and trees. We have
also met with it breeding in the Hebrides and
several parts of the mainland of Scotland. When
on the Grampians last summer, I heard a story
of how our photographer, in descending a deep,
overhanging cliff without assistance from anyone
fco figure a Buzzard's nest and eggs a year or

CORN BUNTING'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

6 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

two ago, frightened a shepherd. Having been told
where the bird had built, my brother borrowed
a long rope and crowbar, and, stripping off all his
clothes except trousers and shirt, climbed a steep
mountain side with his apparatus. Upon arriving
at the top of the precipice he drove the crowbar
into the ground with a lump of rock, tied his rope
to it, and, with his camera on his back, began
his descent hand over hand. A shepherd who
happened to be looking on, upon seeing him dis-
appear over the edge of the crag, was so overcome
with emotion that he fell on his knees and
clutched at the grass. Upon regaining mastery
over his feelings, he walked away declaring that
the photographer would never come up again
alive ; but he did, and with a picture too !

When in the air near its breeding - haunt,
the Common Buzzard may be easily identified by
its broad wings, square tail, and plaintive, cat-like
mewing note as it circles majestically overhead.
I have occasionally seen it severely mobbed by
Carrion Crows. If not harried too much by col-
lectors in certain parts of Wales where there is
no game-preserving carried on, it ought to hold
its own for a long time to come. I sincerely
hope it will, for it adds a considerable degree of
life and charm to some of the bare lonely moun-
tains, on the edges of which it may be seen
hovering in a breeze very much like a great
Kestrel.

Its nest is made of sticks, often in considerable
quantities, lined with hay, dead grass, leaves, or
wool. My friend Dr. Salter, of Aberystwith, tells
me that, according to his experience, Buzzards
use thinner sticks than Kavens in building their
nests, and generally place a few birch twigs with

COMMON BUZZARD'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-ninth natural size.)

8 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

green leaves on in the interior. It is occasionally
built in such a simple situation on a mountain
side that it can be easily reached without the
aid of ropes, as was the case with the nest figured
in the accompanying illustration.

The eggs number from two to four, although
the majority of clutches consist of three. They
are subject to a certain amount of variation in
regard to colour and size, but are not likely to be
mistaken for those of any other British breeding
bird except the Kite, and the extreme rarity of
that bird renders confusion somewhat improbable.

CAPERCAILLIE.

THIS splendid member of the Grouse family has
had a somewhat chequered career as a British
bird. There is no doubt that it lived in the
north of England in pre-historic times, and that
the burning of large tracts of pine forest in Scot-
land and Ireland in order to get rid of wolves and
other vermin, helped greatly to reduce its ranks
and prepare the way for its extinction, which
came about in both countries towards the close of
the eighteenth century.

It was reintroduced from Sweden in 1837; since
which time it has thriven and spread until I have
heard it is regarded as a nuisance in some parts
of Scotland, on account of the injury it does to
young firs, upon the tender shoots of which it
principally feeds.

The bird places its nest, which simply consists
of a natural or scraped hollow in the ground lined
with a few leaves, bits of grass, or pine needles,

CAPERCAILLIE'S NEST AND EGGS.
(ATxmt one-fifth natural sixe.)

10 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

under some bush or bramble amongst grass, heather,
or in the open, in spruce, Scotch fir, larch, and
oak and birch forests throughout the counties of
Perthshire, Stirlingshire, and Forfarshire. Our
illustration was obtained in the first-named county
not far from Dunkeld, and had the female sat a
moment longer my brother would have succeeded
in making a study of her on her nest.

The Capercaillie lays from six to twelve or even
fifteen eggs of a pale reddish-yellow ground colour,
spotted and speckled all over with two shades of
darker orange-brown. Their large size distinguishes
them from the eggs of the Black Grouse, with
which alone they are likely to be confused.

CHOUGH.

FKOM one cause or another this beautiful bird
seems to have been gradually on the down grade
in point of numbers since Shakespeare's time, when
it bred in the cliffs of Dover. It still maintains
a lingering foothold in one or two places on the
south coast of England ; but when men actually
wait beneath its nest, morning by morning, in
order that they may. turn its eggs to monetary
account as dropped, in some of its ancient strong-
holds, as I am told on good authority they do, its
banishment from the maritime cliffs of England
seems to be only a question of time.

It still breeds sparingly in Wales, and also in
Ireland, where our illustration was obtained. The
nest was situated on a small ledge in a cave
where, as may be judged, it was no easy matter
to photograph it. The exposure lasted something

CHOUGH'S BREEDING HOLE.

* Nest

12 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

like fifteen minutes, and the nest has an added
interest in the fact that it was the last of its
kind, in all probability, examined by the late
Mr. Seebohm.

Amongst the inner Western Isles of Scotland
it is said to have suffered banishment from some
of its old haunts through the aggressive spreading
of the too numerous Jackdaw, and its ranks are
certainly thinned in that part of the country by
the fierce Peregrine Falcon. I know one
Hebridean island in which the Chough was
within the memory of man the commonest breed-
ing species of its family, but the advance of the
impudent Jackdaw and other causes have reduced
it to something like eight pairs. In addition to
the above causes, the request for the bird as a
cage pet has no doubt also helped in the gradual
diminution of its numbers.

Although resembling a Book or Crow, the
Chough may be easily recognised by its orange-
red bill and legs, and its note is much shriller
and more metallic than that of the Jackdaw.

Its nest is composed of sticks, heather stalks,
grass and wool, with an occasional lining of hair,
and is placed in fissures, clefts, and caves of
maritime cliffs and holes in old ruins. The eggs,
numbering four or five, and occasionally six, are
of a dirty creamy- white, sometimes tinged with
blue or green and spotted with light brown and
ash grey. They are not likely to be confused with
those of any other species except the Jackdaw,
and the noisy presence of the parent birds is
sufficient to settle any doubts upon the point.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 13

CORN-CRAKE.

CORN-CRAKES' nests are not easy to find, on account of
the facts that they are well hidden, and generally
situated amongst grass, corn, and such other grow-
ing crops as farmers naturally do not care to have
trampled over. On several occasions we have sought
diligently for a nest in a favourite old haunt, but in
vain, until the mower's scythe came along and re-
vealed its whereabouts. At the beginning of June
I visited a lonely spot near the head of a West-
moreland ghyll, that used to be much beloved of
Corn-crakes, in the hope of finding a nest, but was
disappointed to discover that even such a conserva-
tive species will at times forsake an ancestral home.

Upon reaching North Uist every bit of cultivated
land, especially on the west side of the island, ap-
peared to be tenanted by Landrails. They had arrived
on the 7th of May, according to my friend Hector
Mackenzie's diary, and on the 12th of June I com-
menced to search for a nest in one of his meadows
that appeared to be alive with them, to judge from
the chorus of grating, unmusical notes that filled the
air day and night, especially when the weather was
fine. My host's shepherd, a keen, well-informed
naturalist, brought a dog along that he thought
would be calculated to assist me in my task, and by
its aid we turned three pairs of birds out of some
colt's-foot growing round the field, and several
pairs out of the interior ; but we failed to find what
we wanted. We then hunted an adjoining pasture
through which a small iris-fringed stream ran ; but
although we flushed three or four more pairs of birds,
we saw nothing in the shape of a nest. What rather
surprised me was that the birds never appeared to

14 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRD 8.

run when scented by the dog, but jumped up and
flew away with their legs hanging down directly
he approached too near where they were sitting.

The shepherd adjudged it too early to find any
eggs, but upon returning to the field we had first
tried, by his dog's aid, we discovered a nest containing
six eggs in less than five minutes. This was during
the afternoon, and before twelve o'clock the following
day there were two more eggs in the nest, which
was very scantily lined with bits of dead rushes.
I again visited it, when it contained its full com-
plement of ten light-buff, freckled with red-brown
and ash-grey, eggs, and was surprised to find
that the owner had added a quantity of green
grass, which had dried and withered under her, to
its interior. This addition to the structure had
made it a little more concave than when first dis-
covered, and of course enhanced the bird's chances
of covering her ten large eggs.

I paid this particular Corn-crake a visit once or
twice whilst she was brooding, and she sat so
closely that I could have easily caught her. In-
stead of running off amongst the tall grass, she
simply darted away a foot or two to give herself
the necessary impetus, and then took wing.

Our illustration has been made from a photo-
graph taken when the nest contained eight eggs.

CROSS-BILL

THIS extremely interesting, though somewhat ir-
regular wanderer, breeds sparingly in various parts
of the United Kingdom where suitable conditions
for the procurement of an adequate and regular

CORN-CRAKE'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-third natural size.)

16 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

food supply prevail. It is said to be increasing in
numbers, but were such not the case there would
be no fear of the extinction of the species so
long as we continue to grow plantations of cone-
bearing trees, since some members of the great con-
tinental incursions, which take place from time to
time, would be sure to stay and nest with us.

Although sometimes feeding upon insects and
the pips of apples, the Cross-bill is essentially a
coniferous-tree-loving bird, and when a small flock
is at breakfast in the branch of a fir-tree, its
members keep on fluttering in and out, and send-
ing down such a shower of fragments of the cones
from which they are busy extracting the seeds,
that the ground beneath quickly becomes thickly
strewn with them.

A small colony lived all last winter and spring
in and around the town of Torquay, where there
is every reason to believe young ones were reared.

The nest is built in a fork or on the branch
of a larch or Scotch fir-tree, at a height of from
five or six to forty or even fifty feet. It is
composed of slender twigs, coarse dry grass and
rootlets, with an inner lining of fine grass, hairs
and feathers.

Our illustration was secured near to Cappagh,
in Ireland, where our friend Mr. R. J. Ussher
had- four pairs breeding within a very limited
area, when the photograph was taken in 1896.
Although notorious for their erratic patronisation
of even a favourite breeding-haunt, they have
nested there regularly every year since, and had
young ones as early as March this year.

The eggs, numbering four or five, are white in
ground colour, faintly tinged with blue, and very
sparingly speckled with reddish and pale brown

CROSS-BILL'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

18 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

spots. Both nest and eggs closely resemble those
of the Greenfinch, but the facts that the bird
breeds much earlier and is a close sitter, affording
ample opportunities for identification, serve to
prevent any mistake.

DIVER, BLACK-THROATED.

WHILST in North Uist last spring, I saw quite half
a dozen pairs of the Ked-Throated Divers, but
only came across one of the Black-Throated
species, and have every reason to believe that
there were not more than two of the latter in the
whole island.

In order to visit the pair which I studied, I
was obliged to enlist the friendly assistance of
a gamekeeper, a gilly, and the factor's clerk.
Together we dragged an abnormally heavy old
fishing-boat from its home on a sea-loch, over a
rough, hilly stretch of moorland to a freshwater
one, boasting an islet for every day in the year,
and a goodly stock of Wild Geese, Sea Gulls, and
other aquatic fowl. Our task was an exceedingly
arduous one, and on the return journey was
rendered positively excruciating by the voracity of
myriads of midges.

We had not been in the neighbourhood of that
part of the loch tenanted by the Black-Throated
Divers long, before one of them came flying over
us and pitched on the other side of a promontory.
Bowing up to this we landed, and obtained a
good view of the bird, which the keeper adjudged
from its large size to be a male, some eighty yards
away. Upon catching sight of us he promptly

BLACK-THROATED DIVER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(Barely one-quarter natural size.)

PK^H

BLACK-THROATED DIVER'S BREEDING HAUNT.

20 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

dived, and reappeared a considerable distance
further off. When first seen in the water he was
swimming deeply, but after diving and coming
to the surface again no part of his body was visible,
and the protruding head and neck were strangely
suggestive of a snake peeping from the loch.

A little later we obtained a splendid view of
the female, as she alighted with a gliding splash
in the water not more than forty yards from our
boat, lying partly hidden by a bank.

We found the nest on the wee islet shown in
our second illustration. It consisted of a mere
hollow in a few square feet of earth lying on the
gently- sloping rock. The cavity had a few bits of
dead grass that might reasonably have been blown
in by accident lying at the bottom of it.

The Black-Throated Diver is easily distinguished
from its near relative, the Ked-Throarfced Diver, when
seen through a good pair of field-glasses in a fairly
bright light, and its pair of eggs, huffish to dark
olive-brown spotted with umber to blackish-brown,
are larger and not so profusely spotted.

EAGLE, WHITE-TAILED.

THIS species has been decreasing gradually as a
breeder within our shores for the last two centuries,
and it is really alarming to think of the number
of favourite old eyries that have become tenantless
in the north during the memory of man. I know
one or two places where the White-Tailed Eagle
still maintains a lingering foothold, mainly on
account of the inaccessible character of the ledges
whereon it builds; but for obvious reasons, wild

AA/HITE-TAILED EAGLE'S NESTING SITE.

22 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

horses would not drag from me any information
calculated to hasten the extermination of such a
fine bird.

Many immature specimens have in past years
been trapped and shot in the eastern counties of
England, whilst on their way between their
summer and winter quarters, and invariably re-
ported in the newspapers as Golden Eagles. A
friend living in the Hebrides tells me that adult
birds are often destroyed on the mainland of
Scotland by gamekeepers, unknown to their em-
ployers, a fact for which I can vouch from personal
experience. The mischief caused by killing one
of a pair of old Sea Eagles is greater than that
which would accrue to almost any other bird of
prey, because of the difficulty the remaining in-
dividual experiences in the finding of a fresh mate.
As an illustration of this, something happened to
one of a pair of birds tenanting an old eyrie in the
Shetlands in 1898, and the remaining specimen
not only hung about the site by itself all the
rest of the season, but turned up again during
the spring of 1899, still single.

Our illustration represents the cliff, on an over-
hung ledge of which the eyrie was situated. At
the time of our visit the solitary bird was sitting
on it, and gave us a splendid sight by flying
leisurely away out to sea and back again over our
heads, with the morning sunshine full on it, and
a small crowd of unheeded gulls in pursuit. My
brother quickly descended by the aid of ropes, but
was deeply disappointed to find the nest empty,
save for a number of Sea Eagle's feathers. The
eyrie was by no means a large one, and consisted
simply of a few sticks and a liberal quantity of
moss and dead grass and wool.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 23

Curiously enough, a single bird only now visits
Foula.

The eyrie of the White - Tailed Eagle is
usually a bulky structure of sticks, twigs, heather,
stalks, grass, and wool, because of the fact that it
is enlarged and repaired from year to year. It
is very shallow at the top, and generally situated
on the ledges of high inaccessible maritime cliffs,
although sometimes in a tree or on a small island
in the middle of some solitary loch.

The eggs number from one to three, but a
clutch usually consists of two, which are nearly
always white and unspotted, although specimens
have been found on rare occasions marked with
pale red. They are not likely to be confused with
those of the Golden Eagle on account of their
rough texture and usual absence of coloration.

FALCON, PEREGRINE.

WHILST one would naturally wish to see a noble
bird like the Peregrine Falcon oftener in England,
and not hear of it as the subject of a reward at
such a high price as five pounds sterling per pair,
there can be no doubt that in the interests of
other defenceless species it requires to be kept
within certain numerical limits in many parts of
the British Islands. For instance, it would be
folly to fulminate against its destruction on a
Scottish grouse moor, where I have known as
many as four pairs breeding at the same time.
To my mind, this is one of the species which
proves that the preservation of birds in this
country needs to be regulated by a committee of

24 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

practical ornithologists, since the real interests of
our native birds as a whole are often obscured
by the vapourings of people absolutely without
knowledge of the facts. It may come as a piece
of news to writers who vary the abuse of sports-
men by pulverising parsons and schoolmasters for
destroying rare birds, that many of the former
now recognise the value of the Peregrine Falcon
as a natural and useful weeder-out of weaklings
and disease - stricken birds on grouse moors, and
that there are places where it is preserved in
moderation for this purpose.

I know of one or two places in England where
it still breeds, or attempts, at periods of a few
years, to do so without success. It nests in
Wales both on the coast and inland, is fairly
common in Ireland, where our illustration was
obtained, on the mainland of Scotland and in the
Western Isles, in the Shetlands and Orkneys ; and,
where the cliffs are high and the country wild
and sparsely populated, is perfectly able to take
care of its perpetuation as a species.

The species does not appear to build a nest.
My brother has been down to the eyries of several
in Scotland and Ireland, and found the eggs lying
on the earth and stone chippings in a hollow in
the mould resting on the ledge chosen by the
bird as a breeding site, or in what appeared in
one instance to have been a very old Raven's nest.

The eggs, numbering from two to four, vary
from light orange yellow to pale russet red in
ground colour, and are thickly mottled, spotted
and clouded with various shades of reddish brown.
Neither the bird nor its eggs can very well be
mistaken when seen at home on beetling cliffs
surrounded, as a rule, by wild, bare country.

PEREGRINE FALCON'S EYRIE AND EGGS.
(About one-sixth natural size.)

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

FLY-CATCHER, PIED.

THE Pied Fly-catcher, although local, is by no means
a rare bird. I have during half a day's tramp in
South Wales come across as many as four pairs,
although not specially on the look-out for the bird.
I have also met with it breeding in Westmoreland
and Yorkshire, but never had the good fortune to
find its nest in Scotland.

PIED FLY-CATCHER'S NEST.
(About three-eighths natural size.)

It is easily identified, especially when the male is
seen, as his white wing and forehead patches, black
upper- and white under-parts, render him a very
conspicuous bird for his size.

He has a pleasant little song, resembling that
of the Kedstart so much, that whilst out in Wales
with my brother one day last spring, I stopped him
in order that I might detect the whereabouts of what
I supposed to be a member of the latter species
singing in a cottage garden. The songster turned

PIED FLY-CATCHER'S NESTING SITE.

28 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

out to be a Pied Fly-catcher, which I watched for
several hours. His mate was not far away, and
together they wandered from one part of the garden
to another, but never left it for any length of time.

Although the Pied Fly-catcher generally resorts
to wild out-of-the-way places in which to breed, it
often takes up its quarters in some garden close
by a much-frequented roadside.

It builds in a hole in a tree or wall, and occasion-
ally in a cliff, but generally at no great height from
the ground. I have seen four or five nests in the
two first-mentioned kinds of situation, and none of
them were more than seven or eight feet high. Our
illustrations were secured in the Towy Yalley. After
the decayed stump and its surroundings had been
photographed I took a piece of the rotten wood in
front of the nest away in such a manner that when
the eggs had been figured it could be replaced with-
out doing the site any appreciable injury.

The nest is made of moss, dry grass, dead leaves,
and hair used as an internal lining. Our friend Dr.
Salter, who has had a good deal of experience in
regard to the breeding habits of the species, says
that its nest may always be distinguished from that
of the Kedstart by the absence of feathers, and such
has certainly been the case in the limited number
of nests I have examined. Whilst out with Dr.
Salter one day, he showed us a decayed tree trunk
from which he had taken the eggs of a Greater
Spotted Woodpecker. Upon examining the hole
we found it occupied by the nest of a Pied Fly-
catcher, and that the Woodpecker had hewn herself
a fresh home a few inches higher up, and a Great
Tit had occupied a hole on the opposite side of
the stump.

The eggs of the species under notice number from

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 29

five to eight, of a uniform pale blue or greenish-blue,
resembling those of the Kedstart so closely that
they require the most careful identification.

GOLDFINCH.

THE great enemy of the Goldfinch in this country
is undoubtedly the bird-catcher. I have evidence of
the species being cleared out of some neighbourhoods
by the persistent efforts of the fraternity. Fortu-
nately, very few of the birds advertised by small
provincial dealers as caught in this country have
really been procured within our shores. They are
trapped in Germany, shipped to London, and then
sent down to the provinces. I have seen them
packed in Seven Dials for the purpose.

Nearly all last winter I had the opportunity of
studying a small flock living in a large fallow field
at the back of my house, and happily, Goldfinches
still breed with us in fair numbers in certain
localities. I visited the grounds of a large private
house in Sussex last May, and saw several nests
containing eggs and young. One of the gardeners,
who took an intelligent interest in bird life, told
me that he had known as many as ten occupied
nests belonging to the species immediately round
the house in a season.

By the aid of a ladder and three long sticks which
we lashed to the legs of our tripod we succeeded in
photographing a nest situated amongst the outer
branches of a variegated holly tree, but it was on
a dull, breezy day, and when the plates were developed
my brother discovered that they had been ruined
by the imperceptible vibration of the camera. We

30 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

journeyed to the place again the following week end,
but were dismayed to discover that all the nests we
had previously seen in accessible situations had been
destroyed. They were overturned and hanging to
the slender branches, and their contents lying broken
on the ground below. One gardener had seen
Cuckoos flying in and out of the trees, and said that
the mischief had been wrought by them, but another
older and shrewder man harboured an opinion that
the nests had been prodded out by cowherd boys
with their long sticks. My brother found the nest
figured in the accompanying illustrations just as
we were leaving the grounds. It was situated
near the end of a slender downward trailing branch
of a sycamore tree, and overhung a path bounded
on one side by a high wall, and gave us con-
siderable difficulty in photographing it.

I know places both in Norfolk and Devonshire
where the Goldfinch breeds in small numbers still.
It appears to be partial to gardens and orchards, and
builds in fruit trees, sycamores, and evergreens. Its
nest is made of rootlets, moss, grass, wool, spiders'
webs, lichens, and lined with willow down, hairs and
feathers.

The eggs, although smaller than those of the
Greenfinch and Linnet, are similar in coloration
and markings, so that careful identification is neces-
sary. This is an easy matter, however, when the
bird is brooding, for the observer has no difficulty
in watching her on to her nest.

GOOSANDER.

ALTHOUGH absolute proof of this species breeding
in the British Islands was not forthcoming until

GOLDFINCH'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-third natural size.)

32 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

as late as 1871, it seems to be gradually increas-
ing in numbers, not altogether to the delight of
anglers, on account of the trout it kills in Scottish
lochs. However, there are a few proprietors who
care more for birds than fish, and in consequence
will not have it molested.

It is not so numerous as the Eed-Breasted
Merganser, three of the nests of which species
I have found within a dozen yards of each other
on a tiny islet in a Highland loch. One of these
was in a hole right away beneath the roots of a
tree, and until I made a careful examination of
the old female (which I caught), the down and
eggs, I thought I had succeeded in finding a
Goosander's nest.

My brother journeyed a long way on one occa-
sion in order to photograph a hollow tree trunk
in which a Highland gamekeeper, who was a good
practical naturalist, had found a Goosander sitting
upon her eggs a year or two ago, but unfortu*-
nately discovered when he reached the place that
the old piece of timber had dropped to bits, and been
partly washed away by the mountain burn on the
banks of which it had been grown. The keeper
had known of another nest in a hole amongst
some rocks on a steep timber-clad hillside over-
looking a loch, so our photographer was driven
back upon figuring the latter. I examined the
hole myself, and found that, although it was in
rock, the front was overgrown with heather and
moss.

When the nest is placed in a hollow tree, no
materials except down from the bird's own body
are used ; but when placed elsewhere— such as
under rocks or the roots of a tree — grass and
weeds are utilised in its construction.

GOOSANDER'S NESTING HOLE.
(About one-ninth natural size.)

I)

34 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

The eggs, varying from six to twelve in
number, are creamy white and smooth, and the
down tufts large and greyish- white, without paler
centres or tips.

GREBE, GREAT CRESTED.

THE long cone-like shape of the body of this bird
when seen swimming in the water, and its beautiful
crest, render its recognition an easy task, especially
to the observer endowed with a moderately power-
ful pair of field-glasses.

There is every reason to hope that, in spite of
persecution and the increased precision of firearms,
the species is on the increase rather than decline ;
and it is an exceedingly pleasant duty to be able
to chronicle the fact that it has been successful in
establishing a breeding-haunt on a private piece
of water as near London as Eedhill, and that last
summer a pair brought off their young in one of
the lakes in Eichmond Park.

We have seen and photographed its nest and'
eggs on several occasions on the Norfolk Broads,
and Lord Walsingharn's meres at Merton. The
accompanying illustration was secured from an
open boat at the latter place. As we approached
the spot where the nest was situated, we heard
one of the birds to which it belonged utter a
harsh, croaking note, and found that the eggs had
been left in too great a hurry to admit of their
being covered over.

The nest is a sort of sodden pad composed of
half-rotten aquatic plants, resting on the bottom
where the water is shallow, but more generally a
floating raft-like affair kept in its position by the

OREAT CRESTED GREBE'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-eighth natural size.)

36 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

surrounding reed- stems. As a rule it has but very
little elevation above the water-line, and only a slight
hollow for the reception of the eggs, which number
from three to five — white when first laid, but
soon becoming dyed yellowish brown from contact
with decaying vegetation and the muddy feet of
the parent bird. When the female leaves her nest
of her own free will, she carefully covers her eggs
with portions of the material upon which they
are lying.

Like many other species, the Great Crested
Grebe constructs a spare nest not far from the
one in which the serious work of incubation is
going forth. Some naturalists are of opinion that
it is made for the male to use as a look - out
station, and others as a lauding- stage for the
young. In all probability it serves both purposes,
for the male bird takes charge of the young ones
first hatched, whilst his mate incubates the re-
maining eggs.

Whilst on the Norfolk Broads with my friend,
the Kev. M. C. H. Bird, late one evening last spring,
we saw a pair of Great Crested Grebes swimming
along with three or four little chicks between
them. Presently one of these mounted the back
of its parent, whose sex we were unable to deter-
mine on account of distance and lack of light.
Our boatman, Alfred Nudd, a very capable and
non - varnish - tale naturalist marshman, told us
that the young Crested Grebes secure their posi-
tions on the backs of their parents by seizing
some feathers in their bills, and that he once
found a chick with three feathers plucked from
its father's back swallowed right up to the base
of the shafts. A curious thing about this point is
that many observers have found feathers in the

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 37

stomachs of adult birds of this species. Possibly
the habit may be thus formed, and then continued.

GREBE, LITTLE.

(Dabchick.)

THE Little Grebe is not nearly so rare as the
casual observer might fancy. It generally manages
to elude all but the keenest eyes by its retiring
habits, and the promptitude with which it can
dive and be gone without leaving the trace of a
ripple behind, as soon as it discovers the approach
of an intruder to its haunts.

As a rule it inhabits smaller bodies of water
than the Great Crested Grebe, and we have met
with its nest in old dykes and quite little
ponds. The structure consists of dead and de-
caying aquatic plants, and is generally hidden
amongst reeds, rushes, or whatever else growing
in water will afford it fairly effectual shelter. For
the size of the builder the nest is large, and
oftener than not floats like a tiny reed-locked
raft. It is flat-topped, and such an inconspicuous
amount of it rises above the surface of the water,
that nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of
every thousand taken out of the street, would
adjudge it to be a mere accidental collection of
drifted weeds. Every particle of it is thoroughly
soaked, and I have seen the eggs lying half-buried
in water when their covering of rotten reeds and
rushes has been removed.

The eggs number from four to six, or even
seven. They are white when first laid, but soon
become discoloured by contact with the mother's

38 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

feet and body, and the materials with which she
covers them whenever she has the necessary time,
before leaving her nest. Although the eggs shown
in one of our illustrations were covered as in-
dicated, in the other, when we arrived on the scene,
the one laid last could be easily picked out from
the rest by reason of its much cleaner condition.

The photographs from which the pictures have
been reproduced were obtained under the most
difficult circumstances. The nest was situated
near the middle of a wide Suffolk dyke, and the
wind was blowing hard and cold, rendering a
stand hip-deep and a long journey to dry clothes
prospectively unpleasant ; so we procured a long
plank, stretched it across the dyke, and whilst my
brother and Last Farman shielded the reeds from
the wind with a large travelling rug, I secured
some studies. Once when an uncommonly strong
gust of wind struck the rug and its holders, they
had the narrowest escape possible of falling head-
first off their plank into the water. They would
undoubtedly have gone, had not my brother saved
the situation by letting go his end of the rug
and thus spilling the wind.

A Water-hen had her nest within two or three
feet of that of the Little Grebe, and some of her
chicks were enjoying themselves amongst the sur-
rounding reeds, whilst others were making their
wants known, in weak and plaintive notes, from
chipped eggs.

The Dabchick bred some years ago on the
Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, according to
the veteran ornithologist, Mr. Harting ; and until
quite recently in Wanstead Park.

DABCHICK'S NEST (Covered). DABCHICK'S NEST (Uncovered).

(About one-ninth natural size.)

40 OUR BARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

GUILLEMOT, BLACK.

THE Black Guillemot is common enough in nearly
all suitable places I have visited on the west
side of Scotland and in the Shetlands. It is also
said to be common in the Orkneys, and on the
north and west coasts of Ireland. The Isle of
Man is credited with a few pairs still, I believe,
but I have never met with the bird at the Fame
Islands, the Bass Kock, or in fact anywhere on
the east coast. Whilst in St. Kilda I often had
opportunities of studying the species within a few
yards of me, by sitting perfectly still on the rocks
just above high-water mark, and allowing them to
swim into some little sheltered corner close to
where their mates were sitting. Their black
plumage and large white wing patches readily distin-
guish them at a considerable distance in the water,
and, although they are meek, inoffensive-looking
little creatures, I have upon occasion seen them
fight quite furiously. Our illustration represents
Finlay McQuien, the champion cragsman of St.
Kilda, pointing into a fissure in which Black
Guillemots breed every year.

In spite of the fact that most of the west side
of North Uist is sandy and unsuitable to the
breeding habits of the species, I saw several odd
birds there last June, arguing the presence of sitting
mates somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood.
I was shown a little cave in which a Black Guille-
mot and Eock Dove nested within a few inches of
each other last year. The former deposited its eggs
in a hole gouged out of the rock by some forgotten
tempest, and the latter in a horizontal fissure at
a similar height, but in a different trend of rock.

BLACK GUILLEMOT'S BREEDING HOLE.

42 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

The bird under notice makes no nest of any
kind, but simply drops its pair of eggs on the bare
rock, in holes and crevices of sea cliffs or beneath
boulders just above high-water mark. Its eggs
have occasionally been found in holes in walls and
under crags eighty or a hundred yards away from
the sea.

The eggs are white, faintly tinged with blue-
green or creamy buff blotched, and spotted with
dark and chestnut brown and ash grey. They
cannot well be mistaken for those of any other
species when seen where laid by the bird.

HARRIER, HEN.

FBOM one cause or another this Harrier appears to
be gradually going in the same direction as the
Marsh and Montagu, towards extinction.

MacGillivray reported it as " rather abundant
in North and South Uist in 1841 ," and Gray found
it " very common in the Outer Hebrides as recently
as 1871. " Its decline must have been fairly rapid
since the latter date, at any rate, for this year the
keepers in North Uist only knew of a single pair
breeding in the island, and my friend Mr. Macalfish,
at Loch Maddy, used to see the male come over
his garden about the same hour almost every day
in search of food. We took up our stand one
morning in the bird's line of flight, and waited
for hours together to get a sight of him, but un-
fortunately he did not take his usual route on
that particular occasion. This habit of hunting the
same country in the same direction, and at about
a similar hour every day, has been commented

m ~

HEN HARRIER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-sixth natural size.)

44 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

upon by many writers, and finds its parallel in the
case of the Kite.

As it is now principally a migratory bird, and
turns up in varying numbers from season to season,
there is perhaps more hope for it in some of the
large Scottish deer forests, than for it or its con-
geners trying to breed in England.

The photograph from which the illustration on
the previous page has been reproduced, was obtained
in the Outer Hebrides a year or two ago. The
nest was placed amongst the deep heather, and
was composed of dead stalks and withered grass.
It is said that when situated on wet ground the
nest is bulkier, and composed of sticks, sedge, reeds,
and flags.

The eggs, numbering four or five, and occa-
sionally as many as six, are white faintly tinged
with blue or bluish-green, and occasionally marked
with light rusty red or yellowish-brown. Their
variation in size according to the age of the layer,
and general resemblance to the eggs of the Marsh
and Montagu Harriers attempting to breed in this
country, render the most careful identification
necessary.

HARRIER, MARSH.

THEKE can be but little doubt that the Marsh
Harrier is one of the very rarest predatory birds
still attempting to breed in this country, and that
its chances of ever succeeding in doing so are
of the remotest character, unless it were to bo
afforded a very wide range of effective protection.
Lord Castletown has very kindly held out a sub-
stantial reward to any of his keepers for the

MARSH HARRIER'S NEST.
(For measurements see page 46.)

HOME OF THE MARSH HARRIER.

46 OUR RARE ft BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

finding of a nest on his grounds, where the
species used to breed, in order that my brother
might run over to Ireland and photograph it ;
but it has for years remained unclaimed, and Mr.
J. H. Gurney has been unable to record a single
nest in Norfolk for the last decade. As may
readily be judged, we were therefore greatly elated
upon receiving a letter from our friend the Kev.
M. C. H. Bird last spring, to say that he had the
nests of both the Marsh and Montagu Harriers
for us to photograph. Such a great stroke of
good fortune could not be neglected for a day,
so down we went post haste to Broadland, where
we were met by Messrs. Bird and Gurney, the
former of whom took us all to the Marsh Harrier's
nest, situated amongst the deep sedge grass shown
in our oblong illustration. But alas ! the nest was
empty, and both the poor birds had been trapped
before the hen had had an opportunity of laying a
single egg. I found the remains of a leveret
which one of the luckless creatures had killed and
eaten a day or two before, and cut of! one of its
forefeet to add to my small collection of memen-
toes of rare birds. Mr. Bird says that a great
difficulty about the preservation of Marsh Harriers
is that they are easily trapped or poisoned, and
their habit of wandering over a wide area in
search of food renders them so liable to fall
victims to somebody's gamekeeper.

The nest was placed on a quantity of broken-
down sedge grass fourteen inches from the
ground. It consisted of a small collection of
hemlock stems gathered from the banks of an
adjoining river, gladen, a briar stalk, and a few
bits of rushes, reeds, and dead grass. It was nine
inches in diameter, and had every appearance of

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 47

being unfinished. The marsh-keeper who trapped
the birds says that the male of this species arrives
a week before his mate from their winter quarters,
and occupies his time in getting the nest ready.

The eggs of the Marsh Harrier number from
three to five or six, and are white, although some-
times slightly tinged with milk - blue or pale
bluish - green, and very rarely marked with a few
rusty-red spots. They may be distinguished from
those of the Montagu Harrier by their larger size,
and the fact that the nest of the last-named
bird is absolutely on the ground.

HARRIER, MONTAGU.

ALTHOUGH now, alas! a rare member of the Falconidge
family, this bird has attempted to breed within our
shores much oftener than the last species during
recent years ; but, there is every reason to fear,
with the smallest degree of success.

The nest figured in our illustration was situated
not very far from the unfortunate Marsh Harrier's
attempt at housekeeping, but was not built in
such deep sedge grass. It was placed flat upon
the wet marsh ground, and had a sort of little
courtyard in front of it, where all the vegetation
had been cleared away or beaten down. The diam-
eter of the actual structure was about eight and
a half inches, and its materials consisted of rushes,
sedge, ragwort stems, and a few bits of dead
grass. Mr. Bird considered it a large nest for
two eggs, as the birds add materials, like many
other species, as they lay their eggs.

We waited for several hours in a dyke not far

48 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

away in the hope of getting a sight of one of
the birds, but in vain.

The eggs of the Montagu Harrier number from
four to six, of a very pale bluish-white ground
colour, occasionally marked with a few reddish-
brown spots. They are smaller than those of the
last species, and the fact that the nest is always
placed upon the ground and not raised above it,
affords considerable help in the task of iden-
tification.

HAWFINCH.

IT is said that the Hawfinch has increased con-
siderably in numbers throughout England during
the last half-century or so. If this be the case, it
is sad to think what the bird might have achieved
but for the possession of a fatal weakness for green
peas. This vice brings it into violent collision
with the interests of the gardener, whose gun
thins its ranks every summer in the most alarm-
ing manner. One in Sussex tells me that on an
average he kills about a dozen every year in order
to protect his peas from their ravages, and that
the victims are mostly young birds of the season.

The shy, retiring habits of the bird often
enable it to live in places where it is almost
unsuspected, so that a greater army of observers
better equipped with field-glasses may account to
some extent for the above-mentioned increase.
We have met with its nest in Surrey and Norfolk,
in the latter of which counties our illustration
was secured.

It is essentially an English breeder, and selects
lichen-covered hawthorns, to which it seems most

MONTAGU HARRIER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-seventh natural size.)

50 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

partial, holly bushes, fruit trees, and the horizontal
branches of oaks and similar situations, in which
to build its nest, in plantations, orchards, and on
wooded commons.

Its nest is rather large and slovenly in con-
struction on the outside, but more neatly put
together in the interior. It is made of twigs,
roots, and bits of grass mixed with lichens, lined
with finer roots, grass, and hair inside.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, can
hardly be confused with those of any other species,
on account of their size and coloration, which
varies from olive green to pale reddish brown in
ground colour, spotted with blackish brown and
streaked with dusky grey.

JAY.

THE Jay is as interesting as it is beautiful, and
recognised as easily when seen on the wing, by its
weak undulatory flight, as when unseen by its
harsh note, which sounds something like rake
rake. I must admit, however, to being thoroughly
deceived by the latter some time ago. I was
absolutely certain that I heard a Jay's note in a
copse running parallel with a railway line, and,
creeping up very cautiously to see if I could dis-
cover the exact whereabouts ol the bird, was
amused to find that I had been cheated by the
remarkably imitative sounds produced by a plate-
layer pitching gravel with a steel shovel.

The bird is not, so far as my experience goes,
common anywhere except in Devon and parts of
Essex, within such reasonable distance of Epping

HAWFINCH'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-sixth natural size.)

52 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

Forest, that mourners over the ordered destruction
of a number of the species there not long ago
may take heart.

It is a pleasant reflection for the bird - lover
that even the most vigilant of gamekeepers cannot
encompass the bird's destruction at times. We
have a few pairs on the Surrey hills, and one of
them to my knowledge defied the best efforts of
an exceptionally energetic young watcher last-
spring. They ignored his traps, shunned his gun,
and, what is more, hid their nest so effectually
that he never found it.

We have met with odd pairs of Jays in the
non-game-preserving parts of Wales ; but neither
my brother nor I have ever encountered it in
Scotland, where it must be getting scarce, judging
from the fact that we have been requested by
gamekeepers to send them any Jays' wings we
might come across in our wanderings amongst
their English brethren. These were needed on
account of the useful character of the blue wing
coverts in the manufacture of artificial fishing-
flies. The bird becomes so silent and wary during
the breeding season, that the casual observer might
be pardoned for thinking that it had deserted a
wood in the spring, where he had heard and seen
it plentifully in the autumn.

It feeds its young by thrusting its bill into
their throats and regurgitating. If watched to its
nest containing young from some hiding-place, the
Jay will sometimes descend to the ground and
hop round, and, in case of discovering anything of
a suspicious character, will break through its usual
habit of spring-time silence and dart off with a
harsh squawk.

The nest is placed in evergreens, tall thick

JAVS NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

54 OUR BARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

bushes in hedgerows, hirch and other young and
slender trees growing thickly together, and is
generally at no great height from the ground.
Although not a close sitter as a rule, I have
occasionally had to scare it off its nest by shaking
the tree in which it was situated. The structure
is composed of slender twigs, with an inner lining
of fine roots. Sometimes mud and grass are used
in its construction. It is deep and cup-shaped, as
it often needs to be for the safety of its contents
during the prevalence of strong winds.

The eggs number from five to seven, of a
dusky green ground colour, tinged with light blue,
and thickly covered with light olive-brown spots,
which are nearly lost in our illustration owing to
their smallness and the photographic method of
reproduction.

KITE.

IT is a sorry thing when a bird which was once
sufficiently numerous in the streets of London to
form one of its many wonders to foreign visitors,
should have become so rare in even the remotest
parts of the British Islands, that it pays a dealer
to send men long distances in order to secure its
eggs ; and that one pair of birds should in conse-
quence have tried to propagate their species for
ten long weary years in vain. Such is the per-
sistent robbery of the poor Kite, that I have heard
a naturalist say he would be glad to hear of the
death of the last pair in this country, in order that
the species might be relieved from the never-ceasing
persecution of the collector.

Mr. Cambridge Phillips tells me that one or

OUR 11ARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 55

two pairs do actually succeed in bringing off their
young in a certain part of Wales under protection ;
but in spite of a rumour that the species still
breeds on the west side of Scotland, there remains,
I fear, reason to take a very gloomy view of its
prospects in that part of the country.

ANCIENT HOME OF KITE.

Curiously enough, one pair of Kites, known
to my brother and myself as still attempting
to breed in the Principality, owe their discovery
and ruin to the fact that their ancient stronghold
happens to have been the hiding-place of some
Elizabethan outlaw, at whose shrine numbers of
admirers worship every year.

We visited the locality last spring in the com-
pany of our friend Dr. Salter, of Aberystwith,
who, whilst out one fine morning, was pointing to
a high mountain ridge along which the Kites loved

56 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

to soar in search of food, when I espied a large
bird travelling towards us just above the sky line
of the identical ridge. Its progress was an easy-
gliding soar, assisted by an occasional wing - flap
or two, and my field-glasses soon made out the
long sword-like wings and forked tail of a Kite.
As the bird had been seen several mornings in suc-
cession hunting the same range of hills alone, we
had some faint hopes that after all its mate might
be sitting on an undiscovered nest in the neigh-
bourhood, but unfortunately such proved not to
be the case. We walked round to the ancient
nesting-place where the birds have tried so long
and unsuccessfully to propagate their species, but
found nothing except grounds for suspicion that
they had already been robbed ; so we turned our
steps towards a lonely glen in which they some-
times make a second seasonal attempt to breed,
and had the good fortune to see them both at the
old eyrie figured in our illustration, which they
were engaged in repairing.

In this same little glen a pair of Carrion Crows
reared a brood on one occasion, and the following
spring a pair of Kites came along and enlarged
the old structure for their own purposes. They
had an old nest in an adjoining wood which had
been repaired and added to for so many years
that it rose to a height of two or three feet, and
contained enough sticks to fill an ordinary cart.

A year or two ago my brother and I tried to
save a Kite's nest in Wales, and, in response to
an appeal in The Field newspaper, received a
number of subscriptions to help us to defray
expenses. Unfortunately, when we arrived upon
the scene the eggs had already been stolen ; so
having failed in our object, we returned each

KITE'S NEST.

58 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

subscriber his money in full, and stood the ex-
pense out of our own pockets. On that occasion
we found the farmers in the neighbourhood very
wroth about the robbery — not, alas ! because they
loved the birds, but because they had discovered
the monetary value of Kites' eggs, and felt they
had been done out of something !

The nest is generally placed amongst the
strong forked branches shooting out round the
top of a tree -trunk, or on several springing from
its side, and is composed of sticks, twigs, grass,
moss, bits of rope, string, rag, old newspaper,
and similar rubbish.

The eggs number from two to four — generally
three — of a greyish dirty white, blotched, streaked,
and spotted with dull red, brownish-yellow, and
underlying greyish-lilac markings. The presence
of the parent birds readily serves to identify the
nest and eggs, and I would most earnestly plead
with all lovers of British birds to do what they
can to save such a fine species, now driven to
the last extremity, from extermination. For once
a non-migratory bird has gone from us, it is likely
to be lost for ever.

NUTHATCH.

THE Nuthatch is fairly common in the wooded
districts of the southern and midland portions of
England. I have met with it close to London on
both sides of the Eiver Thames. It is an exceed-
ingly interesting bird to watch running up and
down the trunks and branches of trees in search
of insects, or hammering a hazel nut cleverly fixed

NESTING SITE OF NUTHATCH

60 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

in some crevice. I know a Surrey orchard wherein
every available crack and cranny is filled in the
autumn with the empty shells of Kentish cob-nuts,
from which Nuthatches have extracted the kernels.
The bird's note is easy to detect, especially the
fine long whistle of the male uttered during the
springtime. It is quite unlike the note of any
other British bird, and at once arrests the atten-
tion of the naturalist.

The nest is made in a hole in the trunk or
large branch of a tree, and occasionally in a wall
or the side of a rick. Its most striking peculiarity
is that if the hole chosen should be too large, the
bird plasters it up with earth until it will only
just admit her own body. I have never seen a hole
without any plastering, but have examined one with
so little that, in spite of being close to a footpath,
its presence would in all probability never have
been suspected but for the actions of the parent
birds.

Our illustration was secured in one of the
beautiful lime and chestnut avenues in the town
of Torquay, where my friend Mr. Charles Snell
says two pairs of Nuthatches live, at different points,
all the year round, and are fed during the winter
months by some considerate bird-lovers with Bar-
celona nuts. He informs me that he has often
sat on a garden seat close by the tree, and watched
the old birds run down the bark and into the
hole to feed their young ones. By the aid of a
ladder we made a somewhat minute examination
of the plaster in the upper of the two holes in
the chestnut tree, and found that it measured three
and a quarter by three and a half inches, and was
something like two inches in thickness. It was
composed of the red earth of the country, small

OUR EARER BRITISH: BREEDING BIRDS. GI

pebbles, and road scrapings, and was as hard as
if it had had a quantity of cement mixed with it.
The entrance hole was at the bottom, where it
could not very well be shown in a photograph
taken from the roadway below. It measured one
and a quarter inches in horizontal and one inch in
vertical diameter. At the time the tree was figured,
on the 31st of last July, a pair of Sparrows were
busy building a nest of their own in the hole. I
examined a Nuthatch's nest in Sussex upon one
occasion, and could see the bird sitting on it, but
was unable to dislodge her.

The nest is composed of leaves, flakes of bark,
and grass, and where the bird has to enlarge the
accommodation, of chips arid dust. The eggs,
numbering from five to eight or nine, are white
spotted with reddish-brown. They are similar in
size to those of the Great Tit, but the plastered
hole and the presence of the owner form a ready
and certain means of identification.

OSPREY.

THE Osprey is one of our rarest British birds, and
would in all probability have long since ceased to
breed within our shores but for the protection
afforded it by a few Scottish bird-loving proprietors.
As a migrant, it has, unfortunately, to run the
gauntlet of innumerable shot-guns, whose owners
miss no opportunity of grassing anything un-
common, every spring arid autumn, as it is on its
way to and from its breeding-quarters.

It is an extremely interesting bird, and my
brother and I have both devoted many days to

62 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

studying and photographing it at home, on a
lonely loch buried deep amongst the giant hills
of Auld Scotia.

Upon approaching the wee island on which the
bird breeds every year, I beheld the female stand-
ing erect, like a feathered sentinel, at the very
tip of the withered stump rising above her eyrie.
As my boat was rowed close in she precipitated
herself into space, and, throwing up her wings,
allowed her body and legs to droop as if she had
broken her back, the while uttering her peculiarly
weak alarm note. Altogether her aerial antics,
upon first leaving the much-favoured perch above
her eyrie, were such as to suggest the erratic
behaviour of a mother Plover on leaving her
chicks. When she re-alighted on her coign of
vantage, she always held up her wings in the
attitude in which the camera has caught her, as
shown in the frontispiece to this work.

The male bird did not put in an appearance
for hours, and when he did come home brought
a fine large trout in his talons. When we first
espied him he was sailing round and round in
wide circles far overhead, but as he came nearer
his wonderfully clever method of carrying his prey
became more and more apparent. His legs were
extended almost to their full length, and the fish
grasped firmly about the middle, with its head and
tail pointing in the same direction as those of its
captor, rendering its air-resisting qualities almost
nil. At any rate, although a big fish, it did not
appear to interfere with the bird's powers of flight
in the least, and the fact of its hanging so far
below the body of its captor made the whole
scene strangely suggestive of a miniature flying
machine with a cigar-shaped car attached.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. t>3

One day I watched the female tearing pieces
off a large fish and giving them very daintily to
one of her chicks, which sat up in the nest in
precisely the same manner as a young Golden
Eagle. Directly I approached too near for her
peace of mind she rose, and, to my surprise,
carried the mutilated body of the fish away with
her. On another occasion, when I rowed my boat
too near the islet on which the eyrie was situated,
the male, happening to be there at the time, seized
a large stick, and flying off with it in the same
attitude as he carried his prey, dropped it from a
great altitude into the loch, and then took his
departure towards the place where he did most of
his fishing.

Although the Osprey has no chance of showing
its gregarious nature in this country as in America,
an additional pair — doubtless the descendants of
those under consideration — have established them-
selves on the same loch and built an eyrie on the
mainland, which fact has, of course, robbed them
of a chance of rearing any young ones up to now.
The proprietor of the property upon which these
two pairs of birds breed, or endeavour to do so,
is fortunately a thorough rare-bird preserver, and
when those nesting on the island have eggs, every
boat on the loch is securely chained and pad-
locked.

Ospreys are wonderfully conservative birds, and
if unmolested return year after year to a favourite
haunt and repair the old eyrie. It reaches an
enormous height. The specimen in the frontis-
piece once reached the incredible height of nine
feet before it was blown down by a gale of wind.
It is said by observers living on the spot that, in
obtaining materials for its eyrie, the bird never

64 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

takes sticks from the ground, but always breaks
them off some decaying tree.

A neighbouring keeper told me that he once
saw one of the Ospreys living on the loch, which
must for obvious reasons remain nameless, plunge
after a fish which was so large that it nearly
dragged its would-be captor out of sight under
the water, and that after a struggle lasting quite
five minutes the bird ^was obliged to release its
quarry, in all probability a large pike.

Our illustration, forming the frontispiece to
this work, was taken with one of Dallmeyer's
telephoto lenses, which my brother worked whilst
standing waist-deep in the loch, where he waited
for two hoars in weather none too bright or warm.

OWL, LONG-EARED.

THE Long-Eared Owl — although not often seen
on account of its nocturnal habits, and the fact
that it lives principally in dark fir and spruce
plantations — is much more numerous than would
at first sight appear to be the case, in spite of
the fact that it meets with scant mercy at the
hands of many gamekeepers. My friend Mr. J. J.
Baldwin - Young tells me that it is quite common
for a bird of its class amongst some of the Lin-
colnshire woods, and that he has seen the ground
for yards together under favourite trees littered
with its castings, and adds that the good it does
to neighbouring farmers must be very great.

Although the bird generally adopts the old
nest of a Crow, Heron, Wood Pigeon, Magpie, or
an ancient squirrel's drey, it occasionally departs

LONG-EARED OWL'S NEST.

66 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

rather radically from this rule ; for the Kev.
M. C. H. Bird, of Stalham, tells me that he has
known one member of the species nest on the
ground in his neighbourhood, and I have an
instance of its breeding in a large hole in a tree
in Essex. In this the bird and its young ones
lived in peace, until it took to visiting a farmer's
Dove - cotes close by at night - time and abscond-
ing with his young pigeons, when a breechloader
killed it in flagrante delicto.

Our illustration was secured in a small wood
at Ingham, in Norfolk. From the appearance of
the structure in which the bird had laid its eggs,
one would conclude that it had once been a
Carrion Crow's nest, although placed rather low
down for that bird's love of a good outlook. The
Long-Eared Owl reared a brood of young ones in
it this year ; but, unfortunately, they were cap-
tured directly they left the nest, and after being
kept in confinement for a while and fed upon
dead ducklings, they were killed and sent to the
bird-staffer's shop.

The eggs number from three to seven, but
more generally four or five are found, white in
colour and oval in shape.

OWL, SHORT-EARED.

ALTHOUGH probably never anything but a scarce
species during the nesting season in the Norfolk
Broad district, this bird seems to have maintained
its position better than many others that might be
placed in the same category in regard to breeding

68 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

numbers. This year two nested in the neighbour-
hood of Hickling Broad, and one of them
succeeded in hatching a brood.

Quite recently the coarse grass, rush, or other
herbage growing round the Broads has acquired such
value as fodder for the London market, that in
some places every available blade is gathered in ;
and it is really no exaggeration to say that some
of the 'bus horses now trotting up and down the
Strand, breakfast off Water-hens' old nests, for they
are all raked up and forwarded with the rest of
the stuff, which, I understand, is greatly relished
by the animals to which it is given. The Short-
Eared Owl's nest figured in our illustration had
been discovered by the mowers of this coarse
fodder, and although they considerately left the
bird a patch of rushes and grass round her nest,
she deserted it. Alfred Nudd, of Hickling, says
that when the birds are mown out in this way they
generally desert the nest and make a new one
in the side of one of the heaps of fodder as it
'lies on the marsh. The nest in question ap-
peared to be only a slight natural hollow sparingly
lined with bits of dead rushes, and fairly well
hidden by overhanging standing herbage of the
same kind.

The bird used to nest fairly plentifully in the
Orkney Islands, and as late as 1898 a collector
took no less than sixteen clutches of eggs. I
have met with the species very sparingly in the
Outer Hebrides, and years ago it used to breed round
my home on the North Yorkshire moors, but has
long since been banished by the gamekeeper from
the last-mentioned place.

SHORT-EARED OWL'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-seventh natural size.)

70 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

OWL, TAWNY.

THE Tawny Owl is fairly numerous in many parts
of the countryj especially where little in the way
of game preserving is done. Gamekeepers, are often
fulminated against for destroying it, by people who
fondly imagine that the bird confines its dietary
to field mice and voles.

An old watcher told me that he was once
puzzled to make out what was going off with his
young pheasants, as he felt sure he had next to
no vermin of any kind on his beat. One dull
evening, whilst sitting near his coops, gun athwart
his knees and briar in course of being filled, he
saw a Tawny Owl sail noiselessly out of an adjoin-
ing wood, snatch up one of his young pheasants,
and fly off with it. A long shot killed the
marauder on the spot, and when the keeper picked
her up the young pheasant was still tightly locked
in her talons. Luckily the captive had not been
struck by a single pellet of the discharge, and
when released ran back to its foster mother, ap-
parently none the worse for its strange experience.

I examined a Tawny Owl's nest, if such the
filthy cavity amongst some old hay in a barn loft
could be called, containing two half-grown young
ones, last June, and found half a wild rabbit
about a month old, part of an adult Swallow, the
hinder half of a down-clad young Peewit, a portion
of a full-grown Missel Thrush, and several beetles.
The farmer on whose land the barn was situated
told me that he had often known the parent Owls
bring their chicks nearly full-grown Lapwings. He
further added that about the time the young Owls
become fledged and take to the woods, their parents

NEST OF TAWNY OWL.
(About one sixth natural size.)

72 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

grow very savage when approached with a dog at
heel. A case of a clergyman and others heing at-
tacked by a furious member of the species in East
Anglia last spring, which was reported in the
newspapers at the time, had its parallel in West-
moreland some years ago. A pair of Tawny Owls
tenanted an old cow-shed for years together, and
laid their eggs every spring in a wooden milk-
bowl, which the farmer on whose land they lived
obligingly placed for their accommodation in a
hay loft. The female knew her benefactor so well,
that she would allow him to stroke her back whilst
she sat on her eggs, without being in the least
disturbed. But one day, just after she had hatched
out her chicks, an inquisitive servant-girl visited
the shed in order to inspect the down- clad young
" oolets." Directly she had mounted a ladder
sufficiently far for her head to be on a level with
the floor of the loft, the infuriated mother Owl
darted forward and buried her talons in the terrified
maid's scalp, and nearly destroyed the sight of one
of her eyes.

Our illustration was made in the hay-loft of
an old tumble-down bam in the north of England,
by means of magnesium ribbon, which had to be
burnt over a shovel so as to prevent setting the
building and its contents on fire.

Although the Screech and Tawny Owls breed
in somewrhat similar situations, the larger-sized
eggs of the latter prevent any mistake in regard
to their identity, if the birds themselves should not
be seen.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 73

PETREL, LEACH'S FORK-TAILED.

WHILST staying at St. Kilda three years ago, I
had several opportunities of studying this interest-
ing little bird. The cragsmen were going to
Borera one day after sheep and sea-fowl, so my
brother and I arranged to accompany them.
Landing was rendered difficult on account of a
heavy ground swell rolling in from the Atlantic ;
however, after a failure or two, we eventually
succeeded in effecting our purpose, and, climbing
up the terribly steep side of the great crag, arrived
at the sloping field of turf tenanted by Puffins
and Fork - Tailed Petrels. The former were in
plenty of evidence, countless thousands flying
overhead and resting upon the ground on every
hand, but the latter gave not the slightest sign
of their presence. I failed even to detect a single
churring note coming forth from the much-
tunnelled earth, and yet they were there in fairly
plentiful numbers. The St. Kildans professed to
be able to tell their burrows from those of the
Puffins around them by their smaller size ; how-
ever, my discrimination was less keen, and I got
severely bitten by more than one Tarn O'Norrie
in my researches.

Altogether I saw the cragsmen take six or
seven birds from their nests, and as soon as the
gentle little creatures came into the light of day
they ejected a quantity of amber - coloured oil.
Upon being released some of them flew away sea-
wards with a curious skimming, half-circling sort
of flight which it is difficult to describe or liken
to that of any particular bird, and others simply
scuttled back to the far end of their burrows.

On the top of the Doon, figured on page 79,

74 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

we found a small colony breeding to the right
of the highest peak. Their burrows were made
in the dark half-peat, half-vegetable-looking mould,
which we had no difficulty in lifting back in
great chunks so as to show the egg lying at
the end of the tunnel, and then replacing after
the photograph had been taken. In about two-
thirds of the nests which I examined the egg
was lying on a few blades of dead grass, and in
the remainder upon nothing at all but the bare
earth.

The Fork-Tailed Petrel breeds at several places
in the Outer Hebrides, and on some of the islands
off the Irish coast, where it is to be hoped that
the collector will not quite extirpate it. An
unfortunate circumstance for the species at St.
Kilda is that dealers have opened the eyes of the
natives to the commercial value of its eggs. These
are white, speckled round the larger end with
minute rust-coloured and greyish-brown spots.
Their larger size than that laid by the Stormy
Petrel, and the presence of the close-sitting
parent bird, readily identify them.

PETREL, FULMAR.

I HAD many excellent opportunities of studying
this bird whilst staying in St. Kilda some years
ago, and became greatly in love with its beautiful
flight and gentle manners. Upon approaching its
breeding-haunt the naturalist is soon attracted by
the Fulmar Petrel's graceful gliding flight and
almost abandonment of wing-flapping, which apart
from other differences distinguish it at once from

LEACH'S OR FORK-TAILED PETREL'S NEST AND EGG.
(About one-seventh natural size.)

76 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

the Gulls. I often sat for hours together upon
some advantageously situated crag, and watched
the males feeding and toying with their brooding
mates as they sat on the ledges or steep grassy
slopes of the stupendous cliifs. One of the bird's
strange peculiarities is that it is seldom seen fly-
ing over even the smallest point of land, so that
upon arriving in Village Bay and climbing to the
top of the cliff immediately behind the dwellings
of the St. Kildans, the visitor is struck by the
entire absence of the species, even when he is
within a hundred yards of thousands upon thou-
sands sitting on their nests, or sailing along on
outstretched wings in front of the dizzying preci-
pice. Upon looking over, the birds may be seen
sitting amongst the sea-pink and grass growing
on ledges and untreadable slopes, in such vast
numbers that they look like small fields of daisies.
Although the majority of birds nest in such situa-
tions, many of them drop their single egg in a
little hollow scratched in bare earth, or amongst
small stones and chippings on a ledge or in a
crevice of rock. In. spite of the fact that the
nests were in the most fearsome situations, by
dint of care I succeeded in getting down to
several and examining them without the aid of a
rope, and my brother secured the illustrations on
the opposite page in Soay, without any help ; but,
frankly speaking, such work is only for cool heads
and strong limbs, in addition to some previous
experience in crag-climbing.

The Fulmar Petrel has within recent times
established itself in Foula, and whilst in the
Shetlands in 1898 I saw it breeding in the cliffs
of Unst opposite the Muckle Flugga Lighthouse,
where its eggs were taken a day or two after

FULMAR PETRELS.

(About one-fourteenth natural size.)

EGG OF FULMAR PETREL.
(About one-eighth natural size.)

78 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

our visit. I have no doubt that before long it
will be found breeding in the Outer Hebrides,
where I suspect it used to do so in times
gone by.

The egg is white and rough, and the strong
odour always present on it prevents the possibility
of a mistake in identifying it.

PHALAROPE, RED-NECKED.

THE Bed-Necked Phalarope comes well inside the
first dozen British birds most persecuted for the
sake of their eggs. I spent a considerable amount
of time studying it in one of its old Hebridean
breeding haunts, where it is receiving shameful
treatment, last June, and was simply charmed
with it.

The bird-lover's moments of ecstacy are always
great upon beholding for the first time the living
representatives of some rare species about which
he has read and dreamed for years ; and the con-
fiding nature and interesting habits of this elegant
little wader positively captivate the naturalist,
especially if he has sought for it, as I have done,
throughout some of its ancient summer homes in
vain.

As I mentioned in my recently-published work,
"Wild Life at Home," the last pair of Eed-
Necked Phalaropes attempting to breed in Unst,
where the late Dr. Saxby met with them, had
been shot by a local gunner — a week before my
brother and I arrived in the Shetlands last year—
in defiance of the law protecting the species. A
collector wras found some years ago waist deep in

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80 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS,

a North Uist bog, where the bird still lingered,
impudently blazing away with a double-barrelled gun,
and not a single Phalarope has ever been seen there
since. The same fate has, I fear, pursued the
representatives of the species in another of the
Western Isles, where a despicable individual took
advantage of the poor bird's absurd tameness, and
tried his best to extirpate it with a catapult.
It is really a wonder to me that there are any
birds living at all in some parts of the Hebrides,
for every man's hand appears to be turned against
them, and all eggs of any size worth consideration
have been for a long time gathered for human
consumption. I saw children of incredibly tender
years drive their bare heels into a marsh and,
when the water had welled sufficiently, drop eggs
in to test their freshness; and was told on the
very best authority of a shepherd, who never
troubled even to do this, but ate raw any chick
he found in an egg. The Eed-Necked Phalarope's
eggs were at one time regarded as a negligible
quantity on account of their smallness ; but, alas !
the bagman is very much abroad in Scotland, and
when he can extract a profit from the turnover
of .things of such small commercial value as Star-
lings' eggs, those of the species under consideration
have but a poor chance of ever producing chicks.

Directly I approached the place where I found
the bird breeding, I was besieged by a number of
boys and girls who asked me whether I wanted
to buy Phalaropes' eggs. One of the latter told
me rather boastfully that she had once sold a
clutch for one shilling and tenpence, and the odd
twopence off the round sum plainly indicated to
me the business acumen of the pedlar, During
my stay I saw members of both sexes and all

NEST OF RED-NECKED PHALA.ROPE.

(About two-sevenths natural size.)

82 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

ages, from lisping little toddlers to grey-headed
old men and women, systematically searching the
environs of the marsh for eggs, and it is surprising
that any birds should be left to come back summer
after summer to attempt the almost hopeless task
of perpetuating their species.

The particular locality in which the birds live
is the arm of an old loch which has become
silted up, and has the bare suggestion of a stream
running through it with a number of small shal-
low pools on either side. The whole bog can be
easily waded, although I floundered into a deep,
treacherous hole once or twice, to the wetting of
my much-upturned trousers.

Whilst standing on the edge of the swamp
during my first visit, I saw two birds about the
size of a Dunlin engaged in combat. Turning
my field-glasses upon them, I was delighted to
find that they were Bed - Necked Phalaropes.
Swimming round and round each other they
charged angrily two or three times, when one of
them, evidently considering that he had had
enough of that sort of recreation, flew away, and
left his enemy with what I judged to be a female,
from her greater richness of coloration and
slightly larger size. Altogether I saw five birds
at that particular spot, which appeared to be the
principal rendezvous of the whole stock. They
swam about close to me with the utmost assur-
ance, and fed with an energy approaching that
of Starlings. Several times I saw them leap up
to catch some insect resting high on a rush stern.
The odd bird was evidently an unpaired individual,
for every time he swam too near the others he
was promptly beaten off. The pairs generally fed
close to each other, and if they chanced to

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 83

get separated, called in a low, tirring kind of
note.

I saw two nests containing four eggs each. One
of them was situated on dry ground some sixty
yards from the bog, in a tuft of grass that might
not unreasonably have been expected to hold a
Lark's nest, and the other in a tussock growing on
what had once been probably the foundation of a
boundary fence running right into a part of the
marsh. Both nests were lined with fine dead
grass, and differed little from those of the Meadow
Pipit, except that they were not quite so tidy and
symmetrical. The latter of the two was close
beside a little muddy pool, from which its owner
evidently walked on to her eggs, as they were be-
smeared with mire.

One of the nests I have mentioned had already
been robbed, but I induced the possessor of the
eggs to allow them to be put back in order that
I might photograph them. The other I tried my
best by a system of periodic bribery to save, but it
was of no use. I gave the two lads who found and
showed it to me some money to allow the eggs
to remain in it, promised them some more if I
found everything in order on my next visit, and
was going to leave some money with a local
gentleman to give to the lads when the young
Phalaropes had been hatched. I visited the nest
one day when the boys were likely to be in
school, and found the eggs gone, and seven birds
on the pond where I had previously only seen five.

The natives assured me that when the bird
is robbed of her first clutch she invariably lays
again, and it is to be hoped with more chance of
escaping detection and robbery on account of an
increased wealth of vegetation.

84

OTTR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

Although it has repeatedly been stated that
the Ked-Necked Phalarope has ceased to breed in
the Orkney Islands, I have the most reliable
evidence that this is not a fact. A friend, who
is a recognised authority, has told me of a place,
which he rightly regards as sacred, where at least
half a dozen pairs still breed, and there is no mis-
taking either the bird or its small pyriform eggs,
which I hope before very long to see effectively
protected.

RED-NECKED PHALAROPE AT HOME.

(About one-ninth natural size.)

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 85

PLOVER, GOLDEN.

ELEVATION seems to make no difference to the
breeding requirements of the Golden Plover, so
long as wild boggy heath or rough moorland is
present. I have met it breeding close by the
sea, and on mountain-tops between two and three
thousand feet in height. Although common enough
in nearly all suitable districts throughout the United
Kingdom, I have within recent years noticed a
considerable decrease in its numbers throughout
some old breeding-haunts both in England and
Scotland. Whilst in the Shetlands in 1898, we
met with a few pairs, but considering the suitable
nature of some of the ground we were on, they
could not be called anything but scarce.

As a rule, the Golden Plover does not make
much of a nest. Sometimes its eggs are almost
standing on their sharp ends in a cup-shaped hole
amongst closely-cropped heather, with very little
in the way of a lining, and at others lying in
a slight hollow amongst rough bent grass and
coarse moss, and lined with bits of dead herbage
picked up close by.

The larger size, and buff instead of olive ground
colour of the eggs, and the character of the country
upon which they are laid, as well as the usual
presence of the birds, easily distinguish them from
those of the Green Plover.

The photograph from which our illustration has
been reproduced was taken on the Westmoreland
hills, close to Nine Standards, where the bird has
decreased, from some cause or other, during the
last fifteen years, to a considerable extent. My
brother and I only found two nests during a whole
day's search in the spring of 1897, although we
discovered a good number of Dunlins' nests.

86 OUR 11 ARE R BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

PLOVER, KENTISH.

ALTHOUGH the particular breeding haunt of this
rare and interesting little Plover is well known to
most practical ornithologists in this country, I will
nofc help to hasten its destruction by giving any
particulars calculated to recruit its already large
enough army of persecutors. I had the good
fortune last May to find three pairs, and watch
them a whole day upon the burning shingle
thrown up by long-past Channel storms. They
are easily distinguished from the Einged Plover
by their smaller size and lighter colours, and
are moreover shyer and less demonstrative when
their eggs are approached.

Whilst tramping along the beach, my guide
and I frequently peeped over a high ridge of sand
dividing the sea from the great shingle flats where
the birds breed, to see if we could mark a female
leaving her eggs. After a long and tiring journey
we had the good luck to see a bird rise some fifty
yards from us, and, flying a little way off, alight
and behave in a sufficiently suspicious manner to
warrant us in believing she had eggs. She had
no doubt run some distance before rising, so we
did not go in search of her precious charge, but
lay down to watch. My companion, who had
studied the bird and its habits all his life, told
me that hot weather such as we were then having
was the very worst during which to watch a
Kentish Plover on to its nest, and showery weather
the best. He also added that the number of
young birds that actually get away varies con-
siderably nearly every season.

The individual we had under observation stood
some hundred yards off for a few seconds, uttering

GOLDEN PLOVER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-sixth natural size.)

88 OUR EARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

her plaintive note, which quickly brought her mate
to her side. Together they ran along a grass-
grown ridge commanding a good view of the where-
abouts of their eggs, flew to another ridge, ran
about for a while and then returned, occasion-
ally varying this behaviour by flyiog right over us,
and wrhistling as if to tell us she knew we were
there. We waited for hours in the broiling sun,
which heated the vast plain of shingle until my
field-glasses became utterly useless on account of
the dazzling radiations. At last the bird retired
to her treasure, and jumping up we saw her run
a little way and then take wing and join her
mate on a little plot of short herbage some hundred
yards away.

We soon had a sight of the beautiful little
eggs lying in. a slight hollow amongst the shingle,
with which they harmonised in the most astonish-
ing manner.

The three pairs of birds I saw appeared to
be extremely local in their movements. I tried to
walk one of them off a limited piece of ground on
which they evidently had eggs, but in vain. They
ran along in front of me for some distance, then
flew a few yards, alighted again, and rising, circled
round to the place where I had originally dis-
turbed them, all the while uttering their soft,
plaintive whistle.

The eggs of the Kentish Plover are easily dis-
tinguished by their pyriform shape and scratchy
markings from those of the Lesser Tern, breeding
upon the same ground, and there is not much
chance of even the tyro mistaking them for the
eggs of the Ringed Dottrel.

KENTISH PLOVERS EGGS.
(About one-third natural size.)

90 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDFNG BIRDS.

PTARMIGAN.

THE Ptarmigan is essentially a bird of the moun-
tain and the mist, although under ordinary con-
ditions of weather it does not appear to wander
far below an elevation of two thousand feet, or
above one of four thousand in this country.
Indeed, old Highland gamekeepers have told me
that it is not often met with on the summits of
mountains reaching an altitude of three thousand
odd feet, even where it is fairly plentiful on their
slopes.

It maintains a struggling and somewhat pre-
carious existence on some of the Hebridean islands,
such as Mull, Jura, and Skye, and seems to be
scarcer on mountains of the mainland near the
Atlantic seaboard than those further removed
from it.

We were unfortunately late in reaching the
haunts of the species near Ben Nevis last spring,
but although we did not succeed in finding
exactly what we wanted, my brother managed to
secure some very characteristic pictures of the
bird and its surroundings, one of which is here-
with reproduced.

The finding of the almost full-grown young
bird crouching amongst the grey stones in our
illustration, which I ought to point out somewhat
severely localises its whereabouts, will convey an
excellent idea of the difficulties of discovering a
hen Ptarmigan sitting on her nest. As an
example of how the bird trusts to escaping
detection by the harmonisation of its plumage
with surrounding objects, the mother and other
chicks were crouching behind a stone on the
hither side of the one in the picture at the time

S *

*

z i

B

92 OUR BARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. '

the photograph was taken, and did not stir until
positively obliged to do so.

The nest is a slight hollow scratched in the
ground, generally in the shelter of a stone, and
scantily lined with a few bits of dead grass, and
feathers after five or six eggs have been laid.

The eggs number from seven to ten or twelve,
varying in ground colour from greyish - white to
pale reddish-brown, spotted and blotched all over
with rich dark brown. They are not so profusely
marked as those of the Bed Grouse, and their
ground colour is more buffy.

REDPOLL, LESSER,

ALTHOUGH the Lesser Redpoll has its head breeding
quarters in Scotland and the north of England,
its nest has been found in almost every other part
of the United Kingdom where suitable conditions
for its existence prevail. It is also said to be
more numerous as a breeding species in the north
than in the south of Ireland. I have met with it
in different parts of the country under circum-
stances which left no doubt that it was breeding
in the neighbourhood, but have seldom seen its
nest.

Our first illustration, representing a nest in a
birch - tree, was obtained in an east Norfolk
copse, and the second, showing the eggs, at Rains-
worth Lodge, Nottinghamshire.

The nest is placed in all sorts of trees, such
as firs, elms, alders, hawthorns, and willows, at
varying heights from the ground. Occasionally
it has been met with even amongst heather stalks.

J

2 ,

3 I

C -

9A OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

It is a pretty little structure, built with dry grass,
stalks, moss, and rootlets on a foundation of
slender twigs, and lined internally with willow
down and sometimes hairs and feathers. The
interior is deep, smooth, and beautifully shaped.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, are of a
very pale bluish-green ground colour, spotted with
orange-red about the larger end, and sometimes
streaked with dark brown. In addition they are
also marked with an underlying colour of pale
greyish-brown.

The smaller size and black chin of the parent
bird readily distinguish the nest from that of
either the Twite or Linnet.

REDSHANK.

THIS bird is by no means rare, but, in spite of
being a tenacious lover of favourite old breeding-
haunts, is gradually being banished from some of
them. On Herring Fleet Marshes it is estimated
that it has decreased two-thirds during the last
ten or fifteen years. I have visited its nesting-
grounds in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Westmoreland.
In the last-mentioned county a small colony has
lived all the year round for some time in a
secluded little valley not far from Kirkby Stephen.
I visited the place last spring, and found five
or six pairs living on a few acres of peat
bog covered with rushes, bent grass, and fringe
moss, drained by a small, sluggish stream. They
were surrounded by dry hills and rocks, and one
could not help wondering why they had estab-
lished themselves at such a spot, when there were

REDSHANK'S HAUNT.

REDSHANKS NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

96 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

hundreds of apparently more likely situations in
the neighbourhood. I did not see a member of
the species in the Shetlands in 1898, although
Mr. J. J. Baldwin Young tells me it is abundant
in the Orkneys. On one occasion he spent a
month there during the breeding season, visiting
nearly all the islands in the group, and only
failed to meet with it on a single day.

The Redshank is easily distinguished by its
oft-repeated, shrill, and discordant note, which it
never fails to utter whilst flying overhead when-
ever its breeding-grounds are visited. It varies its
habit of flying noisily overhead by alighting on some
rail, wall, or other eminence, and swaying its body
up and down as if it were on springs, in the most
Sandpiper-like manner. Sometimes it will hang in
the air for a few seconds against a breeze, with
its head pointing skywards, and its tail towards
the earth, and vibrate its wings very rapidly.

Its nest is usually a deep cup-shaped depression
in a large tuft of coarse grass, some of which
overhangs and hides it ; the centre of a bunch
of rushes, or under a tuft of heather. Personally,
I have only seen it in situations of the two
former kinds. It is very sparingly lined with a
few blades of dead grass. The bird has a habit of
scratching out several spare nesting-sites not far
from the one adopted. When placed amongst an
abundant growth of coarse marsh grass, the nest
is not easy to find, and the best plan for the
student to adopt is to go out early in the morn-
ing, when a heavy dew will invariably enable him
to trace its whereabouts.

The eggs, four in number, are easily distinguished
by their buff ground colour and bold markings.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 97

ROCK DOVE.

WHILST in the Hebrides last summer, I was,
during a spell of calm weather, able to explore
several caves on the Atlantic seaboard and ex-
amine numbers of Kock Doves' nests therein at
leisure. In one quite small and dome-like cavern
I found every available ledge utilised, and quantities
of building material lying on the floor of the cave
told of impossibly narrow shelves of rock above
having been tried as lodgments for a nest.

When Odin, the Viking king, leapt at a bound
from the famous seal-clubbing rocks of Hysgier,
some eight or nine miles to the west of the Outer
Hebrides, in order to escape the fury of his irate
queen, and alighted upon the shores of North Uist,
his heels, according to tradition, smote the ground
so sharply that he broke chimney holes in the
roofs of a couple of sea-hewn caves. I visited the
bottoms of both these pits, and found a number of
Kock Doves' nests, from which the owners thereof
dashed in great haste, a very solicitous mother
Rock Pipit, and ample evidences that a pair of
disappointed Eavens roosted therein. My friend,
Hector H. Mackenzie, of Balelone, kindly acted
the part of guide to these somewhat nether regions,
which form splendid timber traps during winter
gales. Whilst we were engaged picking up Ravens'
feathers the birds came along, and my friend told
nie of the damage the pair had wrought him by
attacking the tongues and eyes of partly-born
lambs whose mothers were in extremis.

It was near to the holes made by Odin's heels

that we obtained the photograph of a Rock Dove's

nest herewith reproduced. The bird sat very

closely on it, and when disturbed darted out like

H

98 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

a flash of lightning, her white rump showing up
well against the black rocks, and thus easily
distinguishing her from her sister the Stock Dove.
The nest had originally contained two eggs,
but a Grey Crow hovering round the neighbour-
hood, and a sucked egg on a crag close by, told
their own tale.

Some of the nests which I examined were
made almost entirely of dried seaweed, with an
inner lining of dead grass ; and others consisted
simply of a few roots gathered from an adjoining
field, with a very scanty lining of dry herbage.

The bird is not at all loved in the Western
Isles, on account of the harm it does to farm
crops.

SHAG.

THIS bird is common enough round our coasts,
wherever suitable breeding accommodation is obtain-
able. It is a lover of caves and crevices in
maritime cliffs. I have found it nesting in caves,
vertical and horizontal fissures, under loose boulders,
on shelves that were sheltered by overhanging
crags, and in perfectly exposed corners, all within
one hundred yards of each other. It is easily dis-
tinguished from its near relative, the Common
Cormorant, by its smaller size and green colour.

The outer structure of its nest is generally
composed of seaweed, but this is sometimes supple-
mented by sticks and twigs, and I have seen even
the skeleton and wings of a Kittiwake doing duty
in this respect. The interior is lined with grass,
and at one breeding station which I visited in the
Shetland Islands, the birds appeared to have taken

100 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

a great fancy for decorating their nests with the
green stems, leaves, and flowers of the pink campion.
They had gathered it from some ledges on which
it grew not far away, and although quite fresh, it
was lying beneath eggs in all stages of incubation.
According to my experience, even where a situation
admits of a bulky structure, the nest is never
quite so large as that of the Common Cormorant.

The eggs of the Shag number from two to five,
and are slightly smaller than those of its congener
just mentioned. They are elongated in shape,
and encrusted with a coat of chalk, which, when
scraped away, reveals the pale green shell beneath.
I cannot say that I have noticed the considerable
variation in their shape commented upon by some
naturalists in describing the eggs.

The bird is a close sitter, and as a result
I carry one or two memento scars, from forcible
removals from crevices, upon my hands.

Young Shags when hatched have not a particle
of down upon their little black shiny bodies, a
circumstance which renders them strangely sug-
gestive of the nigger tribe.

The illustration of an adult bird and her nest,
with its guano-splashed surroundings, was secured
at the Noup of Noss by careful stalking.

SHEARWATER, MANX.

ALTHOUGH banished from some of its old breeding-
haunts by rats and Puffins, and harried in others
by collectors and natives, who rob it of its single
egg in the former case, and of its young one in
the latter directly the chick has arrived at a

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W 5

Q 9

102 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BI1WS.

suitable age and condition for the table, the Manx
Shearwater is likely to hold its own for some time
to come as a British breeding species.

When at St. Kilda in 1896, I met with it
breeding in very limited numbers on the Doon,
below the ground occupied by the Puffins and
Fork-Tailed Petrels, and my brother secured the
picture on the opposite page of a burrow from
which a bird and its egg had been taken a day
or two before our arrival. The hole had been
scraped out of the rich vegetable mould between
boulders of rock, and it and others in which birds
were in all probability sitting at the time were
surrounded by luscious grass, of a most delicate
green, and sorrel. I was anxious to go over at
night in order to listen to the guttural melody
of the brooding birds, which the natives told me
could generally be heard, but unfortunately an
opportunity never presented itself. During my stay
I investigated the islands of St. Kilda and Borrera
with some degree of thoroughness, but never found
a single nest. I had, on account of the freshen-
ing of the wind and the rising of the sea, unluckily
to leaye Soay (where Dixon says a large colony
breeds) too suddenly to do much, except catch a
young St. Kilda Wren and get a fine sight of
the wild sheep on it.

Within the last decade, my friend Mr. Harvie-
Brown has seen flocks aggregating thousands all
feeding together in Scottish waters ; and in " A
Fauna of Argyll and the Inner Hebrides," pub-
lished in 1892, gives a most interesting account
of his visit the previous year to what he regards
as the " great headquarters " of the species in
Scotland. The colony, which is situated in Eigg,
occupies five or six miles of cliff face, some of

MANX SHEARWATER'S NESTING HOLE.

104 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

which, luckily enough, cannot be visited by even,
the most daring cragsman on account of its rotten
character.

The Manx Shearwater breeds fairly plentifully
in the Scilly Islands and in suitable places round
the Irish coast, in addition to the west side of
Scotland, where it patronises the Inner Hebrides,
principally. It also rears its young in the Orkney
and Shetland Islands.

The nesting burrow is said to be invariably
dug by the bird itself, and the single smooth
white egg is — like that of its near relative the
Fork-Tailed Petrel — sometimes laid on a few blades-
of dead grass or fern fronds, and at others on the
bare mould.

SISKIN.

ALTHOUGH numbers of Siskins are no doubt caught
every winter in England, to supply the demand
for them as cage pets, in which capacity they are
great favourites, I think these chiefly belong to
the continental species, roaming from place to
place in search of food.

The nest has been found very sparingly in various
parts of England from time to time, but in Scot-
land it breeds regularly in many of the great pine
forests so well suited to its habits. I have heard
that its breeding numbers are decreasing in that
country, but the increase of timber land and game
preserving one would think ought to help it, and
whilst in some of the great Highland forests last
spring, I could find no evidence of its diminution.
But, of course, precise evidence in regard to a
bird of its rarity and habits is obviously difficult

SISKIN'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fourth natural size.)

106 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

to obtain. It breeds regularly in Ireland, where
my brother photographed two nests at Cappagh in
1896 by the aid of a very long ladder, several
strong guide-ropes, and a small army of men, and
Mr. Ussher tells me in a letter that a pair nested
again this year in the same locality.

The nest is generally placed on the branch of
a fir at a considerable height from the ground,
although specimens have been found in England
in such lowly growths as juniper and furze bushes.
It is composed of slender twigs, dried grass, and
moss, lined internally with vegetable or animal
down, and occasionally feathers.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, are
greyish-white tinged with pale bluish-green or blue,
and speckled and spotted with rusty and dark
brown, and occasionally streaked with the darker
colour. Generally the markings are scattered over
the surface, but sometimes they form a zone at
the larger end. The eggs resemble those of the
Goldfinch very closely, but the presence of the
parent bird will, of course, always settle any doubts
as to their identity.

SKUA, GREAT,

THIS bird supplies a most striking object lesson
of what may be accomplished in the saving of a
species from extinction by a measure of effective
protection during the breeding season. In the late
Dr. Saxby's time there were some six or seven
pairs of Great or Common Skuas breeding on the
top of Hernia Ness, in Unst, and he expressed a
fear that the banishment of even these was but a

GREAT SKUA GETTING READY TO ATTACK.

GREAT SKUA'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-seventh natural size.)

108 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

question of a few years. His relatives the Edmond-
stons, of Baltasound, however, very laudably took
up the preservation of the birds, and, building a
wooden hut on the most commanding part of the
ground which they tenanted, placed a watcher in it
every spring to look after them and their eggs.
The success of this measure has been so great,
that when my brother and I visited the place last
year there were no less than thirteen pairs of birds
nesting- on the property. The species also has a
colony in Foula, where, I understand, effective
protection to its members is afforded during
their stay upon the island every spring and
summer. This is altogether delightful, for the
naturalist who visits the breeding-haunt of the
Great Skua during the month of June is never
likely to forget his experience. There is some-
thing so bold and dashing about this fierce
buccaneer of the air, that it appeals to the imagina-
tion and impresses itself upon the memory in a
way that, so far as my experience goes, no other
British species can succeed in doing.

When my brother and I arrived on the rough
bent- clad hillside upon which the majority of the
birds breed, our friend Mr. Laurence Edmondston,
who is worthily carrying out the traditions of his
forbears, asked his keeper to show us a number
of the nests under his charge. Whilst we were
all standing round one, its owners would never
dream of attacking, but directly a single indi-
vidual only was left, down swooped the birds with
terrific fury. I was anxious to find out one or
two things, and succeeded in doing so. First of
all, I imagined that I was gifted with nerves
sufficiently strong to allow my reason to defy
my primitive instincts of self-preservation, but the

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 109

Great Skua completely undeceived me. When the
birds dashed upon me, the sound of their wings at
close quarters was like the rush of an express
train, and do what I would, I could not avoid in-
voluntarily ducking my head in order to escape
being struck, for a considerable time. Upon
gaining sufficient mastery over my feelings to
stand perfectly still, I had my cap knocked off
several times over by blows which, when striking
rather low down, stung badly. The method of
attack is to swoop from a considerable height at
a terrific speed, and when sufficiently close to the
intruder's head, to drop both feet and hit him with
their fronts on the back of the head. As soon as
the blow has been delivered the birds shoot up-
wards, and circle round for a fresh attack. They
never strike the object of their resentment face
on. I tried by wheeling round quickly to get
them to do this by the calculation of time, but,
however close, up they shot, and sailed away with
outstretched wings, as seen in our illustration.

All the nests we examined were made of dead
grass and bents in varying quantities. In nearly
every case a mock nest had been built not far
from the one containing eggs, and the birds have
been known, when an original nest became flooded
through heavy rains, to convey their eggs to the
supplementary structure.

The eggs, as a rule, number two, but occasion-
ally only one, varying in ground colour from light
buff to dark olive-brown, spotted and blotched
with dark, rusty, or greyish brown, and are easily
identified by the presence of the savage parent
birds.

'110 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

SPARROW, TREE.

THE more extended my investigations into the
bird life of this country become, the more con-
vinced am I that the Tree -Sparrow is less rare
than it is generally supposed to be. Its
notes, habits, and appearance bear such a
general resemblance to those of the House-
Sparrow, that there can be no doubt its pre-
sence is overlooked by nearly all but practical
ornithologists.

Whilst at St. Kilda in 1896, I saw quite eight
pairs of Tree - Sparrows, and succeeded in finding
four nests, two of which were situated in dry
walls, and the remainder in the cliffs on the east
and west sides of Village Bay. They all contained
young ones, which I handled in three out of the
four cases. I have also met with the bird once
or twice in the Outer Hebrides, and last summer
had a good opportunity of studying two pairs
nesting in the chimneys of a farmhouse in which
I was staying in North Uist.

A fewr years ago I fell in with a colony of
three or four pairs breeding in holes in the trunk
and branches of a dead tree in a lonely, out-of-
the-way part of Hertfordshire, but upon returning
the following spring I was sorry to find that the
tree had been blown down.

Our picture was also secured in the same
county. I watched the birds build their nest,
which was a surprisingly small one, in a hole in
the tree figuring in the foreground of the illustra-
tion, and afterwards discovered that it contained
no less than eight eggs, the highest number re-
corded, I believe, for the species.

The nest is composed of straws, dry grass,

TREE SPARROW'S NESTING SITE.

112 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

rootlets, hair, and feathers, and is a loose and truly
Sparrow-like structure.

The eggs are slightly smaller than those of
the House- Sparrow, which they resemble, however,
so closely in coloration that I would not under-
take to differentiate them without seeing the
parent birds. At close quarters, or by the aid of
a moderately powerful pair of field-glasses, there
is little difficulty about identifying them ; for
amongst other differences in the breeding plum-
age, the crown of the male Tree- Sparrow is reddish-
brown and the House - Sparrow ashy grey ; and,
more important still, whilst both sexes in the
former species have a black throat, only the male
of the latter is so adorned.

TERN, LESSER.

WE have obtained photographs of this bird's eggs
both on the Norfolk and Kentish coasts. At its
principal station on the former it is at least hold-
ing its own, on account of the practical character
of the protection afforded it by an association of
East Anglian bird lovers ; but at a famous old haunt
on the latter it is gradually dwindling in numbers
year by year, through increase of population and
visitors to its breeding grounds. It is a great pity
the species should have such a fatal aptitude for
nidification on the mainland, instead of upon islands
like the other members of its family, for it is a
sweet little bird which we can ill afford to lose as
a breeder.

The male and female show great affection for
each other, and when the latter is brooding it is

LESSER TERN'S EGGS AND NEST.
(About one-quarter natural size.)

114 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

a very pretty sight to see her companion plunging
into the sea for surface-swimming fry, and feeding
her with it as she sits upon her eggs.

When flushed, the brooding female is not so
demonstrative as the Common or Arctic species,
although she will fly overhead uttering her sharp,
piercing note, which sounds, as nearly as the
characters of the alphabet can render it, like pirre.

It is by no means a difficult matter to sit and
watch the bird on to her eggs by the aid of a pair
of field-glasses, but walking to the exact spot and
finding her treasure is another story. Although
one may walk as straight towards the place as a
gun-barrel, the alternating ridges of shingle or the
absolute flatness of the field soon mislead one as
to distance, and even when the precise place has
been reached, the eggs harmonise so wonderfully
with the millions of pebbles lying around them,
that they are exceedingly difficult to detect by
the unpractised eye.

They number two to four, and their small size
and bold markings readily distinguish them from
those of the other members of the Tern family.

TIT, BEARDED.

IT was reported that the severe winter of 1894-5
had extirpated both the Bearded Tit and the
Dartford Warbler, but luckily such is by no
means the case in either instance.

Drainage and the thoughtless greed of the
collector have played such havoc with the species
under notice, that during the last forty years it
has in the Norfolk Broad district — its headquarters,

116 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

and in all probability now sole breeding ground-
decreased from 150 to 33 pairs, or to the alarming
tune of 78 per cent., according to Mr. J. H.
Gurney, who is an exceedingly careful observer,
in touch with all the best bird men of East
Anglia. Of course, the figures can only pretend to
be approximate, and their compiler himself queries
the correctness of his starting-point ; but when
every allowance has been made for inexactitude,
there remains the irreducible fact that one of our
prettiest and most interesting native birds is de-
creasing in numbers at such a rate, that vanishing
point is likely to be reached within the next few
decades. I appeal to all British ornithologists to
do what they can to save it. What is the value
of a few empty egg-shells in individual private
cabinets, compared with the retention of such a
splendid breeding species to the nation ?

During the early part of June, 1898, my
brother and I spent several days in making photo-
graphic studies of the bird and learning something
of its habits and domestic economy. Although
late for such an early-breeding species, we suc-
ceeded in finding a nest containing six eggs, saw
two broods of young ones that had only just left
the nest and were being fed by their parents,
and located a third lot of chicks, which we were
unable to reach on account of the exceedingly
awkward nature of the place where they had been
hatched.

We discovered the nest figured on the opposite
page more or less by accident. A Wild Duck, in
leaving her own treasure-house in a hurry, frightened
a male Bearded Tit off a nest upon which he
happened to be doing duty at the time, and by
the exercise of a little patience I watched him

BEARDED TIT'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-quarter natural size.)

118 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

back to it, and noted the exact situation. It
was placed practically upon the ground, in a
tussock of coarse herbage. The exterior consisted
of blades of sedge, and the interior was lined
with fine grass and seed down. The eggs were
apparently quite fresh, and taking all their
characteristics into consideration, it would have
been difficult to confuse them with those of any
other species.

The male Bearded Tit makes a really model
husband. He helps to incubate the eggs, and
does his share, if not more, in feeding the chicks ;
and it is a genuine treat to see him hanging up-
side down, carefully examining the water-level of
a reed stern for insects, or swinging to and fro
in the wind, with his legs wide apart and his
feet firmly grasping two divergent reeds.

The first two things that strike the observer
are the unlikeness of the bird in every respect to
the Tit family, and the suitableness of its local
name of Reed Pheasant.

TIT, COLE.

THE Cole Tit is one of our commonest birds,
although not such a garden-loving, suet-grubbing
creature in the winter time as its congeners the
Great and Blue Tits.

In some districts, both in England and Scotland,
I have found it breeding in greater numbers than
even the Blue Tit. It makes its nest in holes in
old walls and decayed trees, often within a few
inches of the ground; and even in the tunnels of
rats, voles, and mice, it is said, although I never

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120 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

had the good fortune to find one in the latter
kind of situation myself.

The exterior of the nest is made of moss,
which is often used in liberal quantities where the
cavity to be filled up is large, and the interior of
the same material mixed with hair, wool, rabbits'
down, and feathers, which are, however, sometimes
quite absent.

The eggs number from five to ten. In the
case of the nest figured in our first illustration,
there were eight, and three of these were lying
directly beneath the rest in such a way as to
make one wonder how they all received an equal
degree of warmth from the body of the brooding
parent bird. Those lying at the bottom were so
deeply embedded in the foundations of the struc-
ture as to suggest that no daily or other periodic
turning over took place. The nest was situated
behind two easily removed loose stones adjoining
the wooden post of an occupied labourer's cottage
doorway.

There is no certain way of distinguishing this
Tit's eggs from those laid by other members of
its family, except the seeing and recognising of
the bird itself. If this be done there can be no
possible mistake, for it is only likely to be con-
fused with the Marsh Tit, which has no white
mark on the back of its head, as shown in our
second picture, illustrating a Cole Tit going to its
nesting hole with food.

Both parent birds feed their young, and are,
like all their congeners breeding in our islands,
most assiduous in their attentions to them.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. I'll

TIT, CRESTED.

TOWARDS the end of last spring I was staying near
to Spean Bridge, intending, when I had finished
my work in that particular part of the country,
to descend the valley of the Spey in search of
Crested Tits at home.

As the country around me seemed to contain
all the essential elements of the bird's habitat,
and was moreover not far away from the district
I had always been led to understand formed its
headquarters, I began to look for it and make
some inquiries. As a result I was shown two
favourite nesting sites of the species within a mile
of each other, by a local naturalist. One of these
was in a cast-iron gate-post, to which the bird
gained access by means of an open bolt-hole, and
the other in the hollow tree figured in our illus-
tration. The entrance hole was situated just above
the line of the third wire from the top in the
deer forest fence behind the tree, and rather
nearer the left than the right hand side of the
trunk. It had been tenanted six or seven years
in succession ; and I much regretted arriving just
after the young ones had become fully fledged,
and were flying about amongst the neighbouring
tree tops with their parents, whose notes I at
once detected as belonging to some bird I had
never had the pleasure of hearing before. Owing
to the foliage, and their trick of keeping to the
highest parts of the trees, it was no easy matter
to get a good view of the adult birds through my
field-glasses.

In different parts of the forest I saw several
families of Long-Tailed, Cole, and Blue Tits.

It is said that the Crested Tit sometimes digs

122 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

a nesting hole for itself in the standing stumps
of wind-snapped pine trees. This may be the
case in large forests consisting only of one kind
of timber; but I do not think it can often be
done in forests of mixed trees, for during my re-
searches I came across scores and scores of eligible
sites in hollow trunks and branches.

The nesting materials and eggs do not differ
very widely from those of some of the other
members of the Tit family, but the appearance
of the parent birds is a very effective safeguard
against any mistake in identification.

TIT, MARSH.

WEKE it not a well - established fact that the
relative positions of different species of birds in
regard to numbers are constantly undergoing a
change from one cause or another, it would be
difficult to believe that the Marsh Tit was, as
recently as Colonel Montagu's time, commoner
than its relative the Cole Tit in this country.

It is, like all the other members of its family,
a very busy, bustling bird, flying quickly from
tree to tree, examining crack and crevice in quest
of insects, which its keen eyes seldom fail to
detect.

It makes its nest in holes in trees, walls, gate-
posts, and banks, it is said ; but all those I
have found have been in the first-named kind of
situation, and generally near the ground. The
structure is composed of moss, bits of fine dead
grass, wool, rabbits' down, and feathers, felted
together and used in varying quantities, according

CRESTED TIT'S NESTING SITE.

124 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

to the accommodation afforded by the character
of the hole adopted and facilities of supply.

My brother and I spent a whole day photo-
graphing the pair figured in the accompanying
illustration, which was obtained in a small Hert-
fordshire copse. The nest was situated about six
inches down the hole, showing immediately beneath
the head of the bird on the left, and contained
six or seven young ones, which we saved from
destruction at the hands of a number of brutally
cruel boys, who were prodding them with sticks
one day when we arrived upon the scene.

When the camera was fixed up near the stump
the parent birds were shyer than either the Great,
Blue, or Cole Tits ; and a peculiar thing about
their behaviour was that, although they often went
in opposite directions to search for the small green
caterpillars with which they were feeding their
chicks, upon returning they always waited and
called for each other from neighbouring tree-tops
before approaching the nest.

During the afternoon one of the parent birds
covered the young for a while, and when an
attempt was made to dislodge her, hissed with
great fury.

Like the Cole Tit, when forcibly kept from
entering the nesting-hole with food for the young,
the parent birds will sit on some branch close by
and quiver their slightly-drooped wings, just as
fledglings of many species will do when about to
receive a supply of food.

The eggs number from five to ten, and are so
much like those of several other members of the
family, that a sight of one of the parent birds is
an absolute necessity of proper identification.

126 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

WAGTAIL, YELLOW.

I THINK of all the spring scenes that dwell in my
memory, none are sweeter than the arrival of the
Yellow Wagtail in its old breeding-haunt. When
the sunshine and showers of April begin to coax
forth the buttercups, and the kine are turned out
to browse in the meadows of my native Yorkshire
dale, down flies a gaily-dressed and cheerful little
bird. He loses no time in any kind of useless
preliminaries, but commences at once to run about
round and between the legs of the cows, taking-
short fluttering excursions into the air after flies,
or snatching them up from amongst the short
green grass. Frequently he will walk up within
a few inches of a cow's face, and hawk the insects
she shakes from her ears, without being in the
least frightened himself, or disconcerting the beast
in the smallest degree. They understand each
other, for they are old mutual friends and bene-
factors. The one attracts the food supply of the
other, and the reduction of a pest that tickles
ear, eye, and udder all day long is something to
make even a mild-eyed cow grateful.

It breeds in all parts of England (except the
extreme west), in Wales, the south of Scotland,
and, to a limited extent, in Ireland. I have met
with it most numerously in Norfolk, parts of
Suffolk, and in the Yorkshire and Westmoreland
dales. Although much commoner than the Grey
Wagtail, its nest is, according to my experience,
more difficult to find. The Yellow Wagtail is a
great lover of old haunts, and often resorts to the
same fields and pastures, however small, year after
year. I have seen its nest, containing both eggs
and young, mown out many times in July, and

YELLOW WAGTAIL'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-quarter natural size.)

128 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

there can be but little doubt that the birds were
engaged with second broods. I have found the
nest on the side of a steep bank with a sod
hanging partly over it, under a tussock of coarse
marsh grass, and amongst heather on a common.
It is composed of dead grass, moss, and rootlets,
with a lining of horse- or cow -hair, down, or
feathers, according to whichever can be most
easily procured. Most of the nests I have examined
have been lined with cow-hair which had been
rubbed off against posts and stone walls.

The eggs, numbering from four to six, are
greyish-white in ground colour, spotted and mottled
with brown of various shades. They are sometimes
marked with blackish-brown streaks at the larger
end. Considering the situation in which they are
laid, they can hardly be mistaken for those of
any other species except the Blue - headed Wag-
tail, the nest and eggs of which have very rarely
been met with in this country.

WARBLER, GARDEN.

THE Garden Warbler is a bird that loves to hide
itself amongst the thick foliage of our copses and
shrubberies, and in consequence is no doubt often
overlooked, in spite of its long - continued and
varied notes, which are uttered when all the other
members of its family are in full blast. It breeds
in nearly all suitable parts of England, the south of
Scotland, Ireland, and in one or two counties of
Wales, and is described as even abundant in some
districts, such as that of north Lincolnshire.

Our illustration was secured in the kitchen

GARDEN WARBLER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

130 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDti.

garden of that little Midland paradise of birds,
Bainsworth Lodge, where our friend Mr. J.
Whitaker cares, winter and summer alike, for all
and sundry feathered visitors.

The Garden Warbler's nest is generally placed
not far from the ground, in gooseberry, black
or red currant bushes, briars, brambles, nettles,
thorn -bushes, and even amongst peas and their
supporting sticks, in gardens, woods, shrubberies,
orchards, and hedgerows growing by streams. It
is a rather flimsy structure, made of dead grass
stems and blades, fibrous roots, and sometimes a
little moss or wool, and lined with rootlets and a
little horse-hair.

The eggs number from four to six, of varying
ground colour, from white to greenish -white or
yellowish stone-grey, spotted, blotched and clouded
with varying shades of brown, deep olive, and ash-
grey under-markings. The spots and blotches some-
times predominate at the larger end. Occasionally
specimens are marbled with brown. They are so
much like those of the Blackcap, that I have been
quite unable to pick them out when mixed up.
However, the chestnut cap of the female of the
latter species will always help to identify a nest
with certainty.

WARBLER, GRASSHOPPER.

AN essential to the well-being of the Grasshopper
Warbler is plenty of cover in which to hide and
skulk, mouse-like, from observation. It does not
seem to matter in the least whether it be the
growth of wet or dry land, so long as sufficient
density prevails. However, I must admit that I

GRASSHOPPER WARBLER'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fourth natural size.)

132 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

have met with it most numerously on the Norfolk
Broads, where its peculiar reeling notes may he
heard to the greatest perfection in the dusk of
a still summer's evening. Although hearing a
strong resemblance to the chirruping of a grass-
hopper, there is something, apart from their greater
duration, much more solid and machine -like, and
once heard, the merest tyro is not likely to mis-
take them for the sounds produced by any orthop-
terous insect. Like many other unseen birds, its
precise position is difficult to locate by the sound
of its notes, because of the ventriloquial effect
caused by the movements of its head whilst in
the act of emitting them.

The Grasshopper Warbler breeds in most suit-
able parts of England and Wales, some portions
of Scotland, and in Ireland, where our illustration
was secured, not far from Lismore. I have met
with it breeding close to London, and although
nowhere very common, it is still fairly numerous,

Its nest is built on or near the ground,
amongst thick coarse grass, under furze and
similar small bushes, on the sides of hedgebanks,
in fens, woods, commons, and thickets, where
there is an abundance of under - cover in which
it can hide or slip off and away without being
observed. It is made of dead grass and moss,
with an inner lining of fine dry stalks, and is
deep, and difficult to find.

The eggs number from four to seven, of a pale
rosy- white ground 4 colour, and are very liberally
speckled and spotted with reddish-brown. These
markings are most profuse at the larger end,
where occasionally a few fine streaks may be
found. Although it is hard to get a sight of
the parent birds, the eggs present little difficulty

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 133

in the way of identification, and are not likely
to be mistaken for those of any other British
bird.

WARBLER, REED.

THE Keed - Warbler is by no means a rare bird,
and may be heard late most summer evenings
rattling off its loud and hurriedly-delivered notes
on the banks of sluggish rivers, canals, reservoirs,
meres, and broads, particularly in the eastern and
midland portions of England. It certainly breeds
as far north as Yorkshire, where I have seen its
nest, and is said to do so sparingly on the banks of
the Tyne and in Cumberland. In Wales it is rare.

Its nest is as a rule beautifully constructed,
and suspended between the stems of three or
four reeds at varying heights above the surface
of the water. Occasionally it may be found
attached to the slender branches of willows and
other trees growing close to water. The bird
appears to make two distinct types of nest. I
have seen some with such a deep foundation that
they looked like an inverted cone, and others
where this was entirely dispensed with, as in the
case of our illustration, which was secured on the
shores of the Cam not far from Cambridge.

The nest is composed of long blades of dead
grass, leaves of reeds, roots, and wool, with an
interior lining of fine grass and hair. It is, as
necessitated by its situation, very deep, so that
when the reeds to which it is attached are
violently swayed to and fro by strong winds, the
eggs do not roll out. The bird is often victimised
by the Cuckoo.

134 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

The eggs, numbering four or five, vary in
ground colour from pale greenish - blue to dull
greenish- white, and are blotched and blurred with
darker greyish - green and light brown. Some
specimens are marked with black or dark - brown
streaks and spots. The situation of the nest, its
characteristics of construction, and the noisy
behaviour of its owners serve to identify the eggs.

WARBLER, WOOD.

THIS little migrant breeds sparingly in nearly all
suitable parts of England, and I should say even
fairly plentifully in some parts of Wales, from the
number of birds I have heard and seen in some of
the more out-of-the-way woods of the Principality.
It also nidificates in Scotland, but is said to be
rare in Ireland. It is distinguished from its con-
gener the Willow Warbler by its greater length of
wing, a broader yellow band over the eye and ear
coverts, the purer green of its upper and lighter
tint of its under parts.

The loud song-notes of the male, although
difficult to represent by the characters of the
alphabet, are easily distinguished when once they
have become familiar to the ear of the listener.

The species is partial to woods with a plentiful
supply of tall trees. Whilst sitting in a little
well-timbered Westmoreland ghyll a few springs
ago, watching a pair of Blue Tits and a Spotted
Flycatcher feed their young, I saw a Wood Warbler
drop into some tall grass growing on a steep bank,
several times over, and when I went to the spot
found a nest full of feathered young ones. A little

ilti '

ikKi^

REED WARBLER'S NEST.
(About one-fourth natural size.)

13G OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

later in the day my brother came along and photo-
graphed it, with one of the chicks sitting in the
entrance hole anxiously waiting for its mother to
return with a supply of insects.

The nest is placed on the ground amongst thick
grass, dead bracken, and other herbage iri woods,
old plantations, and other places where timber is
plentiful, and is composed of moss, leaves, and
dead grass, lined with fine grass and horse-hair.
It is dome-shaped like that of the Willow^ Warbler
and Chiffchaff, and may generally be distinguished
from them by the fact that it is not lined with
feathers, although some instances have recently
been recorded of this being done by the Wood
Warbler.

The eggs number from five to seven, but more
generally a clutch consists of six, the ground colour
of which is white, speckled and spotted all over
with daik purplish-brown and ash-grey. The
spots are generally most numerous at the larger
end. They are not likely to be confused with
those of any other species breeding in a similar
situation, especially when the appearance of the
bird and the lining of the nest are taken into
consideration.

WATER RAIL.

THE shy, skulking habits of the Water Eail no doubt
make it appear to be a much rarer bird than it really
is, but from the small number of nests found in
this country it cannot, I fear, as some naturalists
assert, be abundant as a breeding species even in
the most favoured localities. I saw a nest at Potter
Heigham in Norfolk last year, and my brother saw

WOOD WARBLER'S NEST AND YOUNG.
(About one-third natural size.)

138 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

and photographed another this year in the same
neighbourhood, and those were the only two we
heard of in the district, although the keen-eyed
marshrnen keep a sharp look-out for such objects of
interest.

I met with a pair inhabiting a reed-grown ditch
running round a small garden in North Uist last
summer, and have no doubt whatever that they had
their nest there, although I was unable to find it.
When discovered in the open, the bird's quick sight
and compressed form enable it to dart away into
the reeds and be gone without appearing to stir a
blade of anything.

Whilst out on the Norfolk Broads late in the
evening, on several occasions I have heard its soft
-whit-like note, which at once strikes the ornithologist
as something strange and new to him on hearing
it for the first time.

The nest figured in our illustration was photo-
graphed not far from Lismore, in Ireland. It was
situated amongst coarse grass and other herbage
growing in a bog, in which the photographer stood
up to his knees. Those we have seen in Norfolk
were both on floating reed beds. The structure is
large for the size of the bird, and usually composed
of reeds, sedge grass, and flags.

The eggs number from five to eleven, but a clutch
generally consists of six or seven. They are creamy
white marked with small reddish and ash-grey spots,
the latter of which are underlying. The eggs of
young birds laying for the first year are smaller than
those of older members, but there is not much fear
of their being confused with those of any other
species breeding in the same kind of situation.

WATER RAIL'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

140 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

WHIMBREL

I AM sorry to say that I harbour a grave suspicion
that this bird neither breeds so plentifully, nor in
so many parts of the north of Britain, as it is
supposed to do by many naturalists. Being a
migrant, its numbers no doubt vary considerably
from season to season, and I wish I could say so
much for its enemies in certain quarters.

Mr. J. E. Gunn, of Kirkwall, tells me that it
is " by no means plentiful " in the Orkneys. I
have met with it in the Outer Hebrides, and at
St, Kilda in the middle of June, but under cir-
cumstances which left no doubt whatever that it
was not there on breeding intent.

In the summer of 1898 my brother and I
visited an island in the Shetlands which is con-
sidered, I believe, to be the ancient stronghold
of the members of the species breeding in this
country. Although we certainly saw two or three
pairs of birds, we had no reason to suppose any
of them, had eggs from their behaviour, with a
single exception ; and after a considerable amount
of trouble we succeeded in finding and photograph-
ing theirs, which are figured on the opposite page.
We were told that a number of pairs breed on
the mainland, but if such is really the case,
I am truly sorry for their chances of taking any
young off, considering the vigilance of the lynx-
eyed egg - eating natives, of whose collecting
capacity I had some proof.

The Whimbrel, although in general appearance
similar to the Common Curlew, is considerably
smaller, and its note varies sufficiently to at once
arrest the ear of the practised ornithologist.
The nest is very similar to that of its congener

WHIMBREL'S NEST AND EGGS.
(About one-fifth natural size.)

142 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

both in regard to situation (amongst short heather
and bent grass) and the lining of it with a few
blades of dead grass.

The four pear-shaped eggs vary from olive green
to olive brown in ground colour, and are spotted and
blotched with brown of different shades and light
grey. They are not likely to be confused with
those of the Common Curlew on account of their
smaller size, but may possibly be taken for
those of the less pear-shaped Richardson's Skua,
as the birds breed on the same ground.
Watching the Whimbrel on to her nest through
a good pair of binoculars is the best way both to
find and identify her eggs.

WOODPECKER, GREEN.

THE Green Woodpecker is the most numerous
member of the Picida? family living in this country,
and appears to confine its breeding area to
England and Wales. Its loud yaffa, yaffa, yaffle
note may often be heard close to London, where
I have sat and watched the bird alternately hunt-
ing the bark of trees for insects, and hopping
about on the ground below in search of ants.

It is essentially a lover of well-wooded dis-
tricts, although I have met with it nesting by a
roadside where there were very few trees in the
immediate neighbourhood, and Dixon mentions
finding a pair occupying a hole in the tiny cliffs
between Torquay and Paignton, where in all
conscience they might have found abundance of
suitable timber.

Some of the older observers speak of the

GREEN WOODPECKER'S NESTING HOLE.

144 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

species occupying the same nesting site for as
many as thirty years in succession. I have never
known a hole used two seasons on end, because
of the Starling's aptitude for finding and promptly
lining and utilising such an excavation for its
own purposes. Indeed, the legitimate owner is
frequently robbed of its breeding-hole directly it
has been dug; and owing to the persistent persecu-
tion undergone, it is useless to look for the eggs
of the Green Woodpecker in many parts of the
country until the Starling has chosen its nesting
site and settled down to the serious work of
nidification.

The hole in the dead tree figured in our
illustration was dug and occupied by a pair of
Green Woodpeckers last year, but was confiscated
quite early in the spring of the present one by
Starlings. It was about two and a half inches in
diameter, did not go to the centre of the trunk
before descending, and was about twelve inches
deep.

The eggs number from five to seven or eight,
are pure white, glossy and unspotted, and can
hardly be mistaken for those of any other species
breeding in a similar situation on account of their
larger size.

WOODPECKER, LESSER SPOTTED,

THE Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, although local,
is by no means a rare bird in suitable parts of
England south of Yorkshire and east of Cornwall.
I had a pair under observation in Surrey for some
time last spring, and frequently heard and saw
one of them producing its resonant hammering on

LESSER SPOTTED WOODPECKER'S NEST.

K

146 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

the branches of a dead oak tree. I hoped to rind
their nest in the neighbourhood, which is an
eminently suitable one ; but was baulked in this,
I regret to say, by a more curious than humane
gunner, who slew one of them in order to have a
closer inspection of the tiny creature that could
make such a far- sounding noise.

The bird makes its nesting-hole in the trunk
or branch of a tree, and often selects for the purpose
such as grow in orchards. It is small in diameter,
and varies from six or seven to twelve or fourteen
inches in depth, and the eggs are deposited on
the dust and debris at the bottom of the rounded
chamber prepared for their reception. Our illus-
tration was secured near to Torquay. The broken
trunk is that of a dead lime, and the tiny entrance
hole to the Woodpecker's nesting-shaft is imme-
diately beneath the first branches from the top
and in front. The birds dug it out, and reared a
brood therein last year, and returned with the
evident intention of doing so again this, but were
ousted by a pair of House- Sparrows. These reared
a brood in the hole during the early spring, and
were busy feeding a second at the time the photo-
graph was taken. In going in and out I noticed
that they had to undergo a considerable squeeze
on account of the smallness of the hole.

The eggs of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
number from five or six to as many as nine, are
white and glossy, and only distinguished with
certainty from those of the Wryneck by their
smaller size and the appearance of their owner.

WRYNECK'S NESTING SITE.

148 OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS.

WRYNECK.

THIS sober - coloured, but nevertheless beautiful
migrant is fairly plentiful, and breeds most
numerously in the south and east of England.
Although not much seen, its presence is always
easily detected by its loud Kestrel-like note,
which is uttered about nine times in quick suc-
cession, and never fails to arrest the attention of
the bird student.

I have met with it in Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex,
and Surrey. Our illustration was obtained in the
first-named county.

Whilst near to Lewes last spring, a gardener
told me he knew of a hollow tree in which a
Wryneck was building her nest, as he had actually
seen her taking materials in. This was so inter-
esting that I got him to take me to the place at
once, and when we arrived there, sure enough the
bird flew out. The hole was about six feet high,
and ran down into an open crack several inches
wide. This was filled with newly gathered rnoss.
I saw the bird alight upon the ground in a park
hard by, and watched for a long time to see
whether she would bring any more moss, but she
did not return whilst I was there. Upon visiting
the same place a few days later I put a slender
twig down the hole, but could feel nothing but
soft yielding moss. The bird, however, laid in
the hole and succeeded in rearing a brood.

The Wryneck generally adopts the deserted
nesting-hole of a Woodpecker, if it has not already
been usurped by some other species, and is not
averse to it even after it has been lined with
moss, wool, and feathers, and used by a Great
Tit.

OUR RARER BRITISH BREEDING BIRDS. 149

When molested on the nest the bird hisses
like a snake, and works her head round in a
manner curiously suggestive of a reptile.

The eggs number from six to ten, and are pure
white and unspotted, a trifle larger than those of
the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, but require the
most careful identification.

YOUNG TAWNY OWL.

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