THE RING OUZEL.
The mountainous districts of the North of England and Scotland are the favourite nesting-places of this bird, which seems most at home in lonely secluded districts. It has often struck me that it is to this bird alone the mountain ash owes its existence high up in nearly every little mountain valley where no other tree is to be seen, the Ring Ouzel eating the berries and dropping the seed in all sorts of out-of-the-way nooks and corners. The situation of the nest, its materials and structure, also the eggs of the Ring Ouzel and Blackbird, differ but little, and I have often had a difficulty in determining the rightful owner of a nest, until the parent bird has been watched on or off. The nest is composed of coarse grass, moss, and mud, with an inner lining of finer grass, and is generally situated in clefts of rock, steep banks, or old walls, sometimes quite on the ground. The eggs number four or five, of a dull bluish-green, freckled or blotched with reddish-brown, markings generally larger and fewer than those of the Blackbird.
THE KENTISH PLOVER.
No trouble is taken by this bird in nest-building, simply depositing its eggs in some depression or hollow of the sand or shingle on the southern coasts of England, principally Kent and Sussex. The eggs number four, and are of a cream, stone, or pale testaceous-brown colour, streaked and spotted with black.
THE BUZZARD.
The Buzzard sometimes builds a nest of sticks, hay, leaves, and wool; at others adopts a crow's nest in some moderately high tree. Her eggs number two, three, and even four, and are of a dingy white; sometimes this colour alone, and at others spotted and blotched at the larger end with red-brown.