Identifier: birdsofbritishis00cowa (find matches)
Title: The birds of the British Isles and their eggs
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Coward, T. A. (Thomas Alfred), 1867-1933
Subjects: Birds -- Great Britain Birds -- Eggs Great Britain
Publisher: London New York : F. Warne
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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s its headand tail constantly, the latter forward, not upwards, but as arule it is a quiet patient fisherman. The nest is tunnelled in a sandy bank, usually though notalways over water; both birds excavate, except when an oldhole of Sand-Martin or water-vole is appropriated. Mostthat I have examined have inclined upward for about threefeet before the nesting chamber is reached. There is no nest,but the six to seven or even more round white eggs (Plate ii8)are placed on a litter of fish bones and disgorged pellets ; theseeggs are pink until blown. Accounts differ about the conditionof the nesting chamber, but I am inclined to agree with Mr.W. Rowan, who found it clean, except for the fishy matter,though the tunnel is a running sewer of greenish liquid anddecomposed fish and smells abominably. The first clutchis usually laid in April, but second broods are often in the nest Short-eared OwL Green Woodpecker. Great Spotted Woodpecker. ( Wryneck. I PL 116. Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. T c86.
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^ ROLLER. 287 at the end of July, and an exceptional case of young in earlyOctober is recorded. The young come to the mouth of thehole to be fed when old enough, but Mr. Rowan found thenewly hatched young uttering a vibrating purr when expectingfood. They are at first without down and clothed with numeroussmall blue pens ; their bills are then steel-blue, their oversizedfeet flesh-coloured, their irides very dark blue. When theyleave the nest they differ little from their parents, except thatthe colours are duller, the spot on the neck is buff, and thegrey margins to the breast feathers give a mottled appearance;their call is then an insistent, continuous trill. The general colour of the upper parts of the adult bird isbright metallic blue, cobalt on the back, and showing greenishreflections on the head and wings ; the ear-coverts and underparts are warm chestnut, the chin and sides of neck white.The bill is black, reddish orange at the base ; the legs arebright red, the irides brown.

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