Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/400

366 August have known the female sitting on eggs" ('Rough Notes,' vol. i. p. 83). On one occasion I found some young as big as their parents in the middle of June, and on the same day an incomplete clutch of fresh eggs, which would indicate that they sometimes breed three times in a season, the first clutch of eggs being therefore hatched in April. Besides this, the number of eggs laid by Mr. Young's tame birds, to be mentioned presently, confirms me in thinking that they breed three, possibly even four times, in a very favourable season.

After the breeding season the young form themselves into family parties, but it is certainly not the case that the males and females keep distinct (cf. Mag. N.H., 1829, p. 224), and such a flock as fifty together ('Birds of Norfolk,' i. p. 151) is not to be heard of now in England.

Continental authors give all sorts of sites for the nest, such as a hut built for duck shooting, but in Norfolk it is placed among reeds (never in nettles, very exceptionally in rushy grass), and is said to take eight days in construction. It is generally a foot above the ground, if a swamp can be called ground, and never, to the best of my belief, suspended. The tallest and stoutest reeds in the reed-bed are its customary support, reeds eight feet high, sometimes quite sere, while exceptionally a nest is hid in a dwarf Alder or cluster of Sweet Gale (Bog Myrtle), a shrub with that aromatic odour which prevails on a dry marsh in June, the Cuckoo's favourite perch. Here it may be remarked that, common as the Cuckoo is round most of our broads, there is no record of its egg being deposited in the nest of the Bearded Tit, which is very singular.

The nests "are extremely liable to be submerged if the tides rise suddenly, either from a heavy fall of rain or a flow of salt water up the river. In such cases the birds at once commence a second nest on the top of their first edifice" (Booth, l.c.), I have not personally heard of any nests being submerged, but Booth was always an accurate observer, and can be trusted.

The nest is about 2·8 inches inside diameter, and is usually composed of the brown blades of the common Arundo, and lined with their feathery tops. A typical nest with its surroundings is reproduced in the Norf. and Nor. Nat. Tr. (vi. p. 434), from a photograph by Mr. R.B. Lodge, who writes:—"Within fifty yards