The Oologists' Record, June i, 1921. 2y 



growing in small shallow damp patches not more than 10 feet wide 

 though quite extensive in length — many such ])laces were very 

 favourite haunts and several nests would be Invuul near each other. 

 Many nests are abandoned if the parent birds discover that they are 

 known to the human intruder, and I frequently noticed that a 

 practically completed nest would be dismantled and re-erected not 

 very far away. These birds also have a habit of destroying com- 

 pletely the remains of their nests when robbed of their eggs. The 

 nests suffer a good deal from the cattle which graze in large herds 

 in the marshes during the breeding season. 



The nests found other than over running water, were as follows : — 

 One was at the edge of a marsh and in a tuft of grass in the centre 

 of a low and open bramble bush, while the other was in a clump 

 of thistles and withered vegetation on a small mound amongst 

 crops which had just been cut, and with no water within at least 

 half a mile of the locality. In marsh land the sitting bird would 

 invariably give away the position of its nest, if one was quick enough 

 to note its mouse-like departure when one was still 20 to a dozen 

 yards awa^^ The Palestine type of eggs, is the white type, thickly 

 spotted and speckled, principally at the large end, with various 

 shades of red, chestnut-red, lake-red, and purplish-red. Eggs of the 

 same clutch do not vary much — fresh eggs before blowing have a 

 decidedly pinkish tinge due to the colour of the yolk partially 

 showing through the thin shells. After cleaning, the eggs are a dead 

 white. Five seems a normal clutch, but sets of six and seven eggs 

 are by no means uncommon, though I imagine it is som,ewhat of a 

 task for the minute parent bird to incubate so many and then rear 

 and nourish so large a brood. As few as three eggs only will be 

 laid, later on in the season, after a bird has probably lost one or 

 two sets of eggs. 



This bird is a late breeder, the first eggs not being found till 

 the 20th June, when three clutches of five eggs each were respec- 

 tively fresh, a few days, and advanced in incubation. It struck 

 me that this late breeding was probably due to adaptation to local 

 conditions, for the grassy areas in and about the marsh land are 

 cut for hay at the end of May and early June — and I did not find 

 any nests with eggs nor any started, until after the hay had been 

 cut, and even then the birds kept to the edges or to small damp 

 localities which were not molested by the haymaker. It is not a 

 long breeding season, lasting but three or four weeks, and the 



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