80 BIEDS 



chivalrous friend is her mate, because next to one of the 

 nests a large rook is constantly perching, and he is seen 

 to feed the inmate. But water he cannot bring, and for 

 that she must come down. But whether he is a husband 

 or a friend he shows devotion and intelligence. 



KATHERINE EVERETT. 



April 13, 1912. 



LATE NESTING 



I yesterday found in the wood here a wood-pigeon's 

 nest with the bird sitting on two eggs. Is not this nearly 

 a record for late nesting? 



ST. DAVIDS. 



October 28, 1911. 



NOTE. Possibly her earlier clutches had been destroyed 

 or taken. There are, however, records of the wood- 

 pigeon nesting (third brood) in October. One is of the 

 hen-bird sitting on two young on October 24, 1920; 

 another of young hatched on October 29, 1900, and a 

 third in the last week of November (see British Birds, 

 December, 1920). Examples of fine and futile avian 

 storge. 



NOTE. The last score or so of valuable accounts of 

 bird behaviour towards their mates or young may be all 

 more or less correlated to and in a single explanation. 

 Fundamentally, they are different expressions of one and 

 the same thing the unique and dominating passion of 

 mating and parenthood. This takes a variety of forms 

 in the attempts of the male to win the love of the female 

 by song, by dance, by aerial display, by pranking out 

 the plumage, and parading his general attractiveness, and 

 by her choice of her mate through the successful excita- 

 tion of her sexual interest; by sex-dimorphism, mani- 

 fested in the acquisition by the male of special decora- 



