326 On the late Rains and their Effect on Bird Life.


These, whose natural home is the burning desert, had withstood

the whole deluge, and until the last fall had thriven, and I think

they really failed through the impossibility of procuring ripening

seeds of their food plants owing to the weather. The rapidity

with which the old parents console themselves and “begin again”

is extraordinary. When the hen laid her first clutch this year I took

the eggs away after they had sat on them for two days, as I felt

sure there would be no food when the young hatched, owing to

the backwardness of the season. Nevertheless she was sitting

again on a full clutch of three eggs on the eighth day after I took the

eggs. Two of these eggs hatched. On the sixth day after losing

her young ones, she was sitting again on three very fine eggs, all of

which are fertile. How is this managed! ! And if birds in an

aviary can reproduce their species so rapidly under adverse

circumstances it goes far to prove how such birds as the Peewit,

who are systematically robbed of their eggs, well maintain their

numbers in a state of nature. The Plovers moreover are not

very distantly related to the Sandgrouse. Even the Wild

Peewits were affected by this weather. A11 old Peewit brought

her young ones in amongst the farm buildings on our home-farm,

and reared her young ones amongst coops of young chickens and

ducks, after a short while taking no notice of human beings,

beyond running a short way and giving vent to a plaintive

Pee-e-wit. The young ones gave up hiding, and used to run a

short way pretending to pick up food in an unconcerned way.

Not only hole-breeding and ground-breeding birds suffered.

Whole broods of Eong-tailed Tits, ready to leave the nest,

perished, also broods of Goldcrests. Most nests of Hedge

Sparrows contained some dead young, as did also those of Green¬

finches and Chaffinches.


Even the well-drained nests of the Jay were not proof

against this cruel storm. The broods are very small, mostly two

or three in place of the usual five or six. I don’t suppose that

my experience of the effect of this weather 011 our wild birds is

at all singular, and it would be interesting if other aviculturists

and ornithologists who lived in the afflicted area would also give

us some account of what the effect has been in their country, and

in their open aviaries.



