on the late Rams and their Effect on Bird Life. 325


nest boxes at home I found numerous broods of young dead.

Whole broods of Tits starved and perished from cold. Not a

brood here and there, but some dozens ; in some cases half the

brood had flown leaving half dead in the nest. I found but one

brood of Tits gone clean away, and they were a brood of Coal

Tits in a box in a dense cedar. Nuthatches suffered in a similar

way in many cases ; the mud lining to the roof of the box had

fallen in (melted from the wet) and buried the young. I also

saw several nests of the Nuthatch in natural situations in which

the same thing had happened. I found two broods of young

Wrynecks perished : one in a box, the other in a hollow spout of

an apple tree. Young Jackdaws perished in numbers, and many

might be picked up hopping about, having left their flooded and

breeding holes before they could fly. Stock Doves also suffered

severely.


I11 two Barn Owls’ nests I found but two young ones in

each, standing on the dead bodies of their brethren. These

evidently had starved owing to their parents being unable to

hunt in the continuous rain. I also picked up two fine youug

Little Owls dead from the same cause, uuder a nest in a rock,

where they must have been perfectly dry. Another brood of

four in a hollow apple tree were all drowned. Even Waterfowl

could not stand against the deluge and floods. Twenty out of

twenty-one young wild-bred Pochards on a mill pond were all

carried over the hatches and whirled away on the flood. House

Martins, of which for some reason we have an unusual number

this season, lost all their nests, scores of them having fallen

from the buildings, but they fortunately will not suffer, as they

are all hard at it again. Partridges as a crop have practically

vanished, every known sitting nest being forsaken even when on

the point of hatching, scores with the eggs “ billed.” In cutting

vetches and clover since the rains many old birds are found

dead on the nests, also many sitting Pheasants, but early

broods of Pheasants did not suffer, and locally, at any rate, hand-

reared Pheasants did extremely well. Our own Pheasants 011

high and very exposed ground throve wonderfully. In my aviary

a Chinese Painted Quail was drowned out of the nest, and on the

21st I lost a pair of young Pin-tailed Saudgrouse a fortnight old.



