384 THE THRUSH FAMILY 



our song-thrush in it will undoubtedly prove to be of singular 

 interest. 



The eggs are incubated for about two weeks. To what extent 

 the cocks of our Thrushes participate in the task is uncertain. 

 The statement is frequently made, and by good authorities, e.g. 

 Naumann, Yarrell, Bailly, that they relieve the hen at times, but 

 one rarely meets with any one who has actually with his own eyes 

 seen a cock on the nest. Mr. Harper Gaythorpe, already quoted, 

 who watched a pair of blackbirds three years in succession, never 

 saw the cock incubating, and he visited the nest almost at every 

 hour of the day. My experience has been the same. I have 

 sometimes been almost deceived into believing that the cock was 

 on the eggs, for in certain lights it is not easy to distinguish an 

 old hen blackbird from some cocks, but the illusion was dispelled 

 as soon as I placed myself at a different point of view. Mr. E. 

 Selous writes of the same species : " I have never come upon the 

 male sitting, and whenever I have watched a nest where eggs were 

 being incubated, there has never been any change upon it ; the birds, 

 that is to say, have never relieved one another, but the hen, having 

 gone off, has always returned, the nest being empty in the mean- 

 while." l On the other hand, Mr. Jourdain has flushed a cock black- 

 bird from a nest with eggs, and Miss E. L. Turner has seen one 

 sitting over three eggs and two young. In this case, however, 

 it is likely that he was there to brood the young. What has been 

 said of the blackbird appeal's to apply equally to the ring-ouzel. 2 

 Owing to the similarity of the sexes it has been more difficult to 

 observe the song- and mistle-thrush, but in the case of both the 

 evidence favours some participation by the male. Here, as in 

 the case of nest-making, and probably also of the brooding of the 

 young and the feeding of the sitting hen, the behaviour of the cock 

 varies with the individual. Nor need this surprise us, for the cock's 

 relations to these functions is infinitely less intimate than that of 



1 Bird Life\Glimpses, p. 207. " Zoologist, 1901, p. 28 (E. P. Butterfleld). 



