Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/525

Rh 9.23.—Both chicks try again. Doubtful if they get anything.

9.27.—Chicks out again, and it looks as if they are fed just a little.

9.28.—Bird flies off uttering a low and yet sharp sound—an unquiet sound. She circles around and about in the air, hawking, I imagine, for insects. Yet no cockchafers, moths, or other large insects are visible to my eyes where she is in the (to-night) cloudless sky. I believe she engulphs in her great cavernous jaws a vast quantity of minute insects, gnats, flies, &c, and that these are disgorged on her return down the chicks' throats.

9.33.—Same bird (hen) settles on elder-stump. Seems to have nothing in beak; nothing breaks its outline against the sky. Almost immediately she flies to chicks and feeds them, but not so fully as before.

9.42.—Chicks try again. Probably get nothing. Too dark now to see properly.

9.45.—Bird off. Circles about a little, and back at 9.48.

9.48.—Feeds chicks, but, so far as I can make out, very little. There is now a little piping note, no doubt from the chicks. The croodle is, I think, the old bird. It is, I feel sure, the same bird as before that has just fed the chicks, but cannot see that it is. Moon now rising.

9.52.—Leave, meaning to return when the moon, now full, is risen. Bird still with chicks. The sky, however, shortly clouded over, and I did not come back.

July 5th.—(Fine day.) 8.33 p.m. Found bird sitting in place where I left her last night. Eyes closed. Lighter coloured chick ran suddenly from mother to the egg-shells, some six or eight inches off, sat there a minute or two, then ran back, tugged at her bill, got nothing, and went under breast again.

8.41.—Chicks come out and try to get fed, tugging long and vigorously at the old bird's beak; but, as far I could see, she simply pulled back again, and they got nothing.

8.45.—Chick runs out from under old bird's tail, then round to her breast, and tries hard to get fed; but in vain.

8.46.—Bird flies off with the impatient or unquiet note. Came out and touched chicks with my finger. They sat quiet. Old bird has disappeared. Coming on to rain.

8.50.—Lighter bird flies up and settles on elder-stump; other