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Show 1870.] LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. 749 with all this a heavy frost is sure to prove fatal to one or more birds in the flock, and sometimes several individuals that have dropped from the branches stiff with cold may be found under the trees where they have roosted. In the morning, if fair, the flock betakes itself to some large tree on which the sun shines, and settle on the outermost twigs on its eastern side, each bird with its wings drooping and its back turned towards the sun. In this attitude, so spiritless, but denoting such great sagacity, they spend an hour or two warming their blood and drying the dew from their scanty dress. During the day they bask much in the sun, and towards night may be again seen on the sunny side of a hedge or tree warming their backs in the last rays. It is owing, I think, to its fecundity and to an abundance of food that the Urraca is able to maintain its place in our fauna; otherwise the cold, its only enemy, would surely pt ove fatal to it. With the return of warm weather it becomes active, noisy, and the gayest of birds ; the flock constantly wanders about from place to place, the birds flying in a scattered desultory manner one behind the other, and incessantly uttering, while on the wing, a querulous, coin-plaining cry. At intervals through the day they utter a species of song, composed of a number of long modulated whistling notes, the first powerful and vehement, and becoming at each repetition lower and shorter, then suddenly ending in a succession of hoarse internal notes resembling the heavy breathing or snoring of a man asleep. When approached, the whole flock breaks out into a chorus of alarm, with notes so annoyingly loud, shrill, and sustained, that the intruder, be it man or beast, is generally glad to quit their vicinity. As the breeding-season approaches, they are heard, probably the males, to utter a variety of low aud soft chattering notes ; they then separate in pairs and grow more silent, becoming also very circumspect in their movements. The nest is usually built in a large thorn tree, and is composed of rather stout sticks ; these are sometimes so rudely put together that the eggs fall from it. Other nests are found more ingeniously constructed, deep, and lined with fibres of weeds, dry or green leaves. The nest usually contains six or seven eggs, but often more; and I have once found one with fourteen. It seems incredible that one bird should have laid all these eggs, the eggs being so very large in proportion to the bird's size ; yet there was but one pair of Urracas in the neighbourhood of this nest, for I had watched them from the moment they began to build. The eggs, when fresh, are very beautiful, being of a rich sky-blue, thickly spotted with white. The white spots are composed of a soft calcareous substance, apparently deposited on the surface of the shell after its complete formation. When the egg is newly laid, they may be easily washed off with water, and are so extremely delicate that their purity is lost on the egg being taken into the hand. The young birds hatched from these lovely eggs are proverbial for their ugliness, Pichon de Urraca being an epithet commonly appl.ied here to a person remarkable for want of comeliness. They are as filthy as they are ugly, so that the nest, generally containing six or eight young, |