September 



Although I have watched these late broods in 

 order to witness, if possible, the very act of desertion, 

 I do not know that I have ever been witness to it. 

 There would in all probability be the excited evolu- 

 tions of the old bird with which she is wont to 

 encourage the first flight of the young, and, in 

 addition, an urgency which the latter would fail to 

 comprehend. Feeling themselves unable to respond 

 to it, they would continue to watch her unmoved 

 from their places in the nest. I have wondered that 

 the old bird should not at such times as at other 

 times she is apt enough to do enter the nest and 

 turn them out on the chance of their flying. But 

 such does not appear to be her habit. In the end 

 she abandons them, and throughout that fatal day 

 the young probably continue to watch for the mother 

 who will never return, until, weak and hungry, they 

 creep back into the nest, for the first time without a 

 sheltering wing to cover them from the chill night 

 air. It is well that the birds have short memories, 

 for, when they return in the following spring, they 

 have been known to draw out the shrivelled bodies 

 of the young they forsook in the preceding autumn, 

 and having cleared the nest of these unremembered 

 children, set about preparing it for the advent of the 

 more fortunate spring brood. 



Seeing that this colony produces certainly upwards 

 of a thousand new birds each year, and that the birds 

 return to the site year after year, it seems a matter 

 for some surprise that the number of the nests 



ii 



