272 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



of offspring to be reared. I can conceive, myself, 

 how a habit of this sort might become developed 

 in a bird, for the number of eggs that can be com- 

 fortably sat upon must depend upon the size of 

 the nest ; and this might tend to decrease, not at 

 all on account of a bird's laziness, but owing to 

 that very habit of building supernumerary nests, 

 which appears to be so developed in the moorhen. 

 That a second nest should, through eagerness, be 

 begun before the first was finished, is what one 

 might expect, and also that the nest, under these 

 circumstances, would get gradually smaller — for 

 what the bird was always doing would soon seem 

 to it the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, 

 the size of moorhens' nests does vary very greatly, 

 some being thick, deep, and massive, with a large 

 circumference, whilst others are a mere shallow 

 shell that the bird, when sitting, almost covers. 

 Such a one was that which I have mentioned, as 

 containing only four eggs — for they quite filled the 

 nest, so that it would not have been easy for the 

 bird to have incubated a larger number. The one 

 from which the five eggs were carried, was, how- 

 ever, quite a bulky one. But whatever the ex- 

 planation may be, this particular moorhen that I 

 saw certainly did destroy five of its own eggs, carry- 

 ing them off, speared on its bill, in the way I have 

 described. Either it was an individual eccentricity 

 on the part of one bird, or others are accustomed 

 to do the same, which last, I think, is quite 

 possible, when we consider how rarely it is that 

 birds are seen removing the shells of the hatched 

 eggs from their nests, which, however, they always 



