The eggs number four or five, greenish- or buffish-white in ground colour, speckled all over with dark olive-brown, and underlying markings of grey.
Although a bird of weak flight, the Furze Wren is very active and nimble when searching from bush to bush for its food, which consists of flies, moths, spiders, caterpillars, and other small deer.
It has a hurried little song, which has been described as “shrill and piping” by one authority, and “an angry, impatient ditty, for ever the same,” by another. Early in the season it is delivered whilst the singer is hovering in the air like a Whitethroat, moving his head from side to side and waving his tail in all directions, but later more soberly from the topmost branch of some furze bush. The slightest disturbance instantly silences the vocalist, and he drops straight into the hiding afforded by the thick cover below.
The most frequently heard call-note of this species sounds like pit-it-chou or pitch-oo, hence its very appropriate French name of “Pitchou.” It also has another harsh note, sounding like cha, cha.
THE MISSEL THRUSH.
The Missel Thrush measures something like eleven and a half inches in length, and is the largest member of its family inhabiting our islands. It is, perhaps, more numerous now than it has ever been before, owing to the long succession of mild, open winters we have enjoyed and the fact that during the last century it has greatly increased its breeding range both to the North and West. In 1800 it was unknown in Ireland, but is now abundant in that country.
On its upper parts the Missel Thrush is ash-brown in colour, and buffish-white below, marked with blackish-brown spots. It may always be distinguished from the Song Thrush by its larger size, greyer colour, and by the fact that when on the wing it shows a conspicuous white stripe down either side of its tail.
This bird loves small woods, well-timbered parks, orchards, and tree-fringed streams common in the dales of the North of England. Its nest is built in the fork of a tree or on a strong horizontal branch at varying heights of from three to forty feet from the ground, but I have never seen it in such a bush as the Song Thrush would be likely to patronise. Sometimes it is small and well concealed, but at others it is large and quite conspicuous. Occasionally I have found it adorned on the outside with lichen matching that growing on the tree wherein it was built, and even with green ivy leaves harmonising with the moss clinging to the trunk of the tree in which it was situated; but, on the other hand, I have found nests ornamented with large pieces of wool waving in the wind, and even the large wing feathers of a white barn-door Fowl. The nest is constructed of a few slender twigs (sometimes these are quite absent), grass stems, moss, mud, and wool, with an inner lining of fine, dead grass. The eggs, numbering four or five, vary from greyish-green to reddish-grey in ground colour, marked with brownish-red spots.