Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/154

130 excavation is always commenced horizontally; then, if the birds are in earnest, the hewing of the downward shaft is begun, and not many holes are abandoned after that. I have known a Woodpecker use the same hole a second year, and that in spite of its having been enlarged with a knife; but it is not usual. Neither is it usual to find the eggs stained, but that also occasionally happens. When they leave the nest-hole the young Woodpeckers are profusely mottled, but their first feathers drop off, except those of the tail, wings, and crown of the head, and are replaced by new ones—no change of colour, but a new feather.

12th.—The circumstance of ten Mute Swan cygnets in one brood at Keswick, and of two pinioned Wild Ducks laying seventy eggs between them, is perhaps not worth detailing; but the rearing of a nest of young Kestrels in St. Benedict's Church, in the middle of Norwich (S. Long), is of much local interest. A black egg of a Partridge† was laid near Fakenham, in a nest with other eggs of the ordinary colour (A. Digby), very undersized, and literally quite black, with an olive tint and some faint specks at both ends. A Corn-Crake at Northrepps had eight eggs† on the railway embankment in a circle of hay-bents beneath a small Dock, and two Nightingales' nests† in St. John's Wort were very pretty. Mr. Southwell writes of five Ring-Dotterel's eggs in one nest on April 12th, one more than customary; and a Wild Duck's nest in a tree provokes the usual wonder as to how the young get down. More Hungarian Partridges' eggs were sent over by Karl Gudera, of Lower Austria, and 64 per cent. hatched out by a gentleman in West Norfolk; but it was not a good Partridge year, although, as will be mentioned presently, the unaccountable spangled race again turned up, and that on the Bylaugh estate, where "Hungarians" have never been turned down.

The above are the principal nesting notes, with the exception that two young Cuckoos were reared by Hedge-Sparrows at Northrepps, and in one case both foster-parents took part in feeding the nestling. This youngster was quite equal to a mouthful a minute, by my watch, but, not staying long in one place, it became evident that other birds, on whom it had no claim, must have contributed to its wants; and no doubt this still went on after it was full-grown. In making out lists of Cuckoos' fosterers this habit needs to be remembered, and in a former