162 BIRD BEHAVIOUR 



her mind is distracted by seeing the other Fowls 

 enjoying life outside her prison. 



The domestic Hen is not alone in being able to 

 solace her mind with a substitute for an egg ; 

 Hume in his " Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds " 

 gives an amusing account of a Kite which sat upon 

 a pill-box until rain wrecked this treasure ; and 

 a pair of Cranes nesting in captivity, but unable to 

 produce eggs, fished up a couple of pieces of brick 

 from the bottom of their pond and made believe 

 they were eggs. Facts like these are of importance 

 when we consider the ease with which birds, even 

 of intelligent kinds, may be duped into caring for 

 eggs of parasitic species. 



There is, as a matter of fact, a physical as well as 

 mental change in a sitting bird ; the abdomen 

 becomes inflamed and bare, constituting the " hatch- 

 ing spot," and no doubt it is irritation here, not a 

 self-sacrificing feeling, which makes Ducks pull off 

 the down of their breasts which they then use as a 

 nest-lining. In the hole-building species indeed 

 this practically constitutes all the nest, but in 

 tropical Ducks, although these often, in fact per- 

 haps usually, breed in holes of trees, this lining is 

 scanty, and may be wanting altogether. 



The commercial importance of the female Eider's 

 down the drake contributes none, apparently even 

 in an emergency is well known, but a physio- 

 logical fact about this bird which is less familiar 

 is its power of enduring a fast while sitting, at any 

 rate in captivity, Mr. St. Quintin, one of the few 



