1903 Notes on the Nests and Eggs of Birds 203 



they may be able to sec them ; but the young, when 

 hatched, are not all covered with snowy down, and surely 

 it is more necessary that their parents should be able to 

 locate their exact whereabouts than that of the hard covered 

 eggs, although I am well aware of the fact that egg-shells 

 become more and more fragile as hatching time draws 

 near ; but at such a state of incubation being reached the 

 incubating parent seldom leaves the nest, and thereby 

 lessens the risk of breaking its eggs by getting off and on 

 to them again. 



The persistency of white eggs is probably accounted for 

 by nature's parsimony : she knows no waste, and has seen 

 no necessity to supply extra colouring matter for eggs which 

 need it not, either for protection from the sun's rays or 

 from more concrete enemies. Amongst British birds, at 

 anyrate, we shall find that uniformly tinted eggs, without 

 any spots or markings, whatsoever be their ground colour, 

 arc all more or less hidden from light and view, — either by 

 the situation of the nest, as in the case of starling, redstart, 

 pied flycatcher, wryneck, woodpecker, and some ducks ; or 

 by a well-constructed nest in addition, as is the habit of the 

 nightingale, whinchat, wheatear, and dipper ; or by being 

 covered by the parent bird on leaving the nest, of which 

 means of protection the ducks and grebes are familiar in- 

 stances. During the past few years there has been a dis- 

 cussion in some of the natural history periodicals upon 

 Darwin's statement about the moorhen thus covering its 

 eggs. I have found hundreds of moorhens' nests in all 

 sorts of situations, but I have never come across a batch 

 of covered eggs, not even on the back river at Cambridge, 

 where I once knew of two nests of this species at the same 

 time, one of which must have had a hundred boats pass 

 within a foot or two of it every day ; the other was within 

 a stone's-throw of the bridge at the bottom of Trinity Hall 

 Gardens. None of our local marshmen to whom I have 

 applied for their views upon the subject ever recollect having 

 seen moorhens' eggs covered, although both they and I 

 have come across instances in which the tops of tall sur- 

 rounding or overhanging vegetation has occasionally been 

 bent down so as to partly conceal both eggs and nest. 



