BIRDS. 465 



known to live with one male, and two males with one 

 female. In all such cases it is probable that the union 

 would be easily broken; and one of the three would readily 

 pair with a widow or widower. The males of certain birds 

 may occasionally be heard pouring forth their love-song 

 long after the proper time, showing that they have either 

 lost or never gained a mate. Death from accident or dis- 

 ease of one of a pair would leave the other free and single; 

 and there is reason to believe that female birds during the 

 breeding-season are especially liable to premature death. 

 Again, birds which have had their nests destroyed, or 

 barren pairs, or retarded individuals, would easily be 

 induced to desert their mates, and would probably be glad 

 to take what share tliey could of the pleasures and duties 

 of rearing offspring, altliough not their own.* Such con- 

 tingencies as these probably explain most of the foregoing 

 cases, f Nevertheless, it is a strange fact that within the 

 same district, during the height of the breeding-season, 

 there should be so many males and females always ready to 

 repair the loss of a mated bird. Why do not such spare 

 birds immediately pair together? Have we not some reason 

 to suspect, and the suspicion has occurred to Mr. Jenner 

 Weir, that, as the courtship of birds appears to be in many 



* See White (" Nat. Hist, of Selborne," 1825, vol. i, p. 140) on tbe 

 existence, early in the season, of small coveys of male partridges, of 

 which fact I have heard other instances. See Jenner, on the retarded 

 state of the generative organs in certain birds, in "Phil. Transact." 

 1824. In regard to birds living in triplets, I owe to Mr. Jenner Weir 

 the cases of the starlings and parrots, and to Mr. Fox, of partridges; 

 on carrion-crows, see the " Field," 1868, p. 415. On various male 

 birds singing after the proper period, see Rev. L. Jenyns, "Ob- 

 servations in Natural History," 1846, p. 87. 



f The following case has been given ("The Times," Aug. 6, 1868) 

 by the Rev. F. 0. Morris, on the authority of the Hon. and Rev. O. 

 W. Forester. " The gamekeeper here found a hawk's nest this year 

 with five young ones in it. He took four and killed them, but left 

 one with its wings clipped as a decoy to destroy the old ones by. 

 They were both shot next day in the act of feeding the young one, 

 and the keeper thought it was done with. The next day he came 

 again and found two other charitable hawks who had come with an 

 adopted feeling to succor the orphan. These two he killed and then 

 left the nest. On returning afterward he found two more charitable 

 individuals on the same errand of mercy. One of these he killed; 

 the other he also shot but could not Ijjjd* No more came on the like 

 fruitless errand. " 



