. Our bird allies . s to attract attention while engagedin family duties, it should still be so plentiful as it is. The nest itself, in spite of its loosely-built ap-pearance, is a tolerably firm and compact edifice,owing chiefly to a coating of mud Avith which theinterior is lined. Within this mud coating is a layer■of grass, and upon this the eggs are laid. These are:generally five in number, and are too well known toxequire description. Upon one occasion I found a nest built apparentlyby a blackbird of an economical turn of mind, for itwas semi-circular, like that of a martin, and was fas-t
. Our bird allies . s to attract attention while engagedin family duties, it should still be so plentiful as it is. The nest itself, in spite of its loosely-built ap-pearance, is a tolerably firm and compact edifice,owing chiefly to a coating of mud Avith which theinterior is lined. Within this mud coating is a layer■of grass, and upon this the eggs are laid. These are:generally five in number, and are too well known toxequire description. Upon one occasion I found a nest built apparentlyby a blackbird of an economical turn of mind, for itwas semi-circular, like that of a martin, and was fas-tened against a fence, which did duty for the re-mainder of the circumference. The Thrush, equally plentiful and still more useful, TITMICE AND THRUSHES. 83 is another of our most familiar birds, and we both hearand see him wherever we go. And even professionalgardeners, the bitter enemies of most of the featheredrace, unite in giving to him the praise which he de-serves. Among the many destructive beings which are. The Thrush. slaughtered in their thousands by the thrush, thecommon garden snail deserves special and particularmention ; for it forms, perhaps, the favourite diet ofthe bird. One can scarcely pass through a gardenwithout noticing one or more of the stones whichserve as sacrificial altars, and the number of broken 84 OUR BIRD ALLIES. shells surrounding them testify most thoroughly tothe beneficial character of their destroyer. Each thrush seems to select some particular stone,to which it brings all its victims, even from somelittle distance, and hammers them thereon until theirshells are so broken that they can easily be extractedand swallowed—very much as the black and thehooded crows open mussels, by dropping them froma height upon the rocks. I once found twenty-oneof these stones in a single garden in the course of a•single morning, the broken shells scattered aroundthem ranging from six to about twenty-five innumber. In addition to snails, the thrush feeds
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1887
