VOL. X.] NOTES. 139 



three. During August fourteen nests were also visited. 

 None of these contained full broods, seven containing four 

 young, and a like number three apiece. There were no 

 broods of six seen in 1916, but twelve nests out of the forty- 

 two visited held broods of five each, or 28.5 per cent., the 

 average brood per nest being four. 



The following table gives the percentages since 1909. with 

 the exception of the year 1914 when I was absent from home. 



H. W. ROBINSOX. 



LARGE INCREASE IN NESTING HOUSE-MARTINS 

 IN LANCASHIRE IN 1915 AND 1916. 



Up to the year 1914 the number of nesting House-Martins 

 (Hirundo u. urhica) was becoming less and less every year 

 in the north-west of England at any rate, so much so that 

 it only seemed a matter of a few years before they would be 

 looked upon as a rare nesting species here. But the summers 

 of 1915 and 1916 have seen them back once more in their old 

 numbers of fifteen and twenty years ago. Under the eaves 

 of buildings where once they used to nest, were again to be 

 seen long rows of seventeen and twenty up to thirty nests. 

 Incidentally it may be mentioned that the parasites which 

 infest them known as Stenopteryx hirundinis have been more 

 numerous than ever. Whereas each nestling up to 1914 

 harboured one or two, or at most three of these creatures, 

 in 1915 and 1916 they swarmed, it being not unusual to find 

 up to a dozen on each nestling. 



H. W. Robinson. 



FOUR EGGS IN A NIGHTJAR'S NEST. 



At the Oological dinner recently held in London, I exhibited 

 a set of four eggs of the Nightjar {Caprimtih/us e. europaeus) 

 taken from the same nest at the same time. The nest was 

 found in June of the present year in north Norfolk. 



