272 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



of offspring to be reared. I can conceive, myself, 

 how a habit of this sort might become developed 

 in a bird, for the number of eggs that can be com- 

 fortably sat upon must depend upon the size of 

 the nest ; and this might tend to decrease, not at 

 all on account of a bird's laziness, but owing to 

 that very habit of building supernumerary nests, 

 which appears to be so developed in the moorhen. 

 That a second nest should, through eagerness, be 

 begun before the first was finished, is what one 

 might expect, and also that the nest, under these 

 circumstances, would get gradually smaller for 

 what the bird was always doing would soon seem 

 to it the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, 

 the size of moorhens' nests does vary very greatly, 

 some being thick, deep, and massive, with a large 

 circumference, whilst others are a mere shallow 

 shell that the bird, when sitting, almost covers. 

 Such a one was that which I have mentioned, as 

 containing only four eggs for they quite filled the 

 nest, so that it would not have been easy for the 

 bird to have incubated a larger number. The one 

 from which the five eggs were carried, was, how- 

 ever, quite a bulky one. But whatever the ex- 

 planation may be, this particular moorhen that I 

 saw certainly did destroy five of its own eggs, carry- 

 ing them off, speared on its bill, in the way I have 

 described. Either it was an individual eccentricity 

 on the part of one bird, or others are accustomed 

 to do the same, which last, I think, is quite 

 possible, when we consider how rarely it is that 

 birds are seen removing the shells of the hatched 

 eggs from their nests, which, however, they always 



