Sir, – One of the great weekend pleasures is reading Ethna Viney's Eye on Nature column and expanding my knowledge of and interest in wildlife, nurtured through having misspent a major portion of my youth wandering the countryside in West Cork searching for and monitoring birds' nests thereby developing a certain expertise in the nest types and egg colours of a variety of birds. It seems to me that, unless age is playing tricks with my memory, the Oranmore blackbird's egg, as featured in your column on Saturday (May 8th), is in fact a portion of a song thrush egg. The blackbird's egg is coloured blue with brown speckles. – Yours, etc,
JOHN SHORTEN,
Balbriggan,
Co Dublin.