120 THE BUZZARDS 



best-known instance is that quoted by Yarrell, who relates the case of 

 a female kept in a garden at Uxbridge, which showed an inclination 

 to sit by collecting all the loose sticks she could obtain. Her owner, 

 noticing her actions, supplied her with materials ; she completed her 

 nest, and sat on two hen's eggs, which she hatched, and afterwards 

 reared the young. For some years afterwards she thus hatched and 

 brought up a brood of chickens annually. One summer, to save her 

 the fatigue of sitting, some young chickens just hatched were put 

 down to her, but she destroyed the whole. Her family in June 1831 

 consisted of nine. When flesh was given her she was very assiduous 

 in tearing and offering it as food to her nurslings. 



More surprising still is the apparently emphatic and gruesome 

 contradiction of the statement, " Birds in their little nests agree," at 

 any rate in the case of the common buzzard, for it has been frequently 

 remarked that whereas, while three eggs are commonly laid, as 

 commonly only one young one is reared. Dr. J. H. Salter supplies a 

 possible key to the mystery. 1 He remarks that the eggs are incubated 

 as they are laid, and in consequence the first hatched is some days 

 older than the last, and consequently stronger, and he suggests 

 that when food, as in the hills, is by no means over-plentiful, the 

 young are never fed to repletion. Thus the larger and stronger bird 

 gets the lion's share of what comes to the nest, and the younger 

 and weaker are made still weaker by the rapacity of the elder 

 bird. Soon a tragedy happens. After some unusually long interval 

 between meals the elder brother eats the younger, and presently 

 the second occupant of the nest goes the same way, thereby realising 

 the Yarn of the Nancy Bell. This interpretation seems to receive 

 support from the fact that in the valleys, where food is plentiful, 

 these grim domestic tragedies do not take place, all the youngsters 

 being reared. On the other hand, it may be that, as in the case of 

 many other species, the younger birds have simply died from lack of 

 sufficient food, and have, in consequence, been removed from the 

 nest by the parents. 



1 Zoologist, 1904, p. 101. 



