156 E. G. B. Meade-Waldo—Aviculture and Wild Bird Protection



1st May at a certain place at Hever, where we fed our waterfowl,

and was noticed for twelve successive years. This was undoubtedly

the same bird. A Brown Owl that was caught in a trap and liberated

with a lost foot was found in a dying state thirty-one years afterwards.

This, too, was the same bird. He was well known to our gardeners,

and frequented a certain area near the house. He did not breed for

some years before his death. Since a predatory bird without a foot

must be severely handicapped, I think the long period of thirty-one

years worth recording. A cock Pied Wagtail, with a slightly drooping

shoulder, nested on this house for eight successive years, and survived

the disastrous winter of 1917. He and his mate had three broods each

season, the second brood generally consisting of a Cuckoo ! and the third

brood not leaving the nest till early August. I have known some game¬

birds live very long qieriods ; but these are not always under purely

natural conditions. There is a drake Pintail here now, full-winged,

and twenty-one years old, which has led a practically wild life ; he is

nearly tame, and his identity is undoubted. He was the father of a

healthy brood of young this summer. Waterfowl are certainly very

long lived.


It is generally supposed, and I think quite correctly, that when birds

in captivity neglect their young and go to nest again, it is owing to

confinement, and possibly to too good living ; but the same thing

occasionally, though I think rarely, occurs in Nature. A pair of

Moorhens on a garden pond here hatched a second brood in early June

of this year; some of this batch were, as usual, taken over by

members of the first brood, but when they were about a week old

the cock first and then the hen refused to feed the young, and when

the latter followed, crying for food, would turn on them savagely

and give them violent pecks. I saw the hen kill one and eat its

brains, and, strange to say, soon afterwards offer food to another !

Eventually all but one were killed by the parents, who went to nest

again at once and treated their third brood in a proper manner.


So much has already been written about nesting-boxes, etc., that

there remains little more to be said. Indeed, I believe I wrote an

article on the subject some years ago, but much interesting information

can be obtained from them. In the summer of 1917, the result of the



