Ground and Underground Nests 



it over. Seven weeks is the time required to hatch these 

 eggs. " One bird could not sit on the same egg for seven 

 weeks. Incubation is carried out not by one pair but by 

 twelve or more, which stand about waiting for a chance 

 to seize either a chicken or an egg, as the post of incubator 

 becomes vacant. Every adult male and female has the 

 desire to sit on something, therefore there is one egg or 

 one chicken to ten or twelve adults. Probably this allows 

 each bird to obtain sufficient food through so long a period 

 of incubation. 



" Not only do barren females take their turn, but males 

 also help. Every bird has the same bare patch of skin 

 in the middle line of the lower part of the abdomen, 

 against which the egg is closely held for warmth. Again 

 and again the birds, weighing anything up to 90 lb., make 

 wild dashes to take charge of any chicken that happens 

 to find itself deserted. The first bird to seize the chicken 

 is hustled and worried on all sides by the others while 

 it rapidly tries to push the infant in between its legs with 

 the help of its pointed beak, shrugging up the loose skin 

 of the abdomen the while to cover it. No great care is 

 taken to save the chick from injury. The chickens are 

 fully alive to the inconvenience of being fought for by 

 so many clumsy nurses, and they make the best use they 

 can of their legs to avoid these attentions, preferring to 

 freeze and starve rather than to be nursed. Half of 

 these unfortunates are killed by kindness." So wrote 

 Dr E. A. Wilson in his Voyage of the Discovery in the 

 A ntarctic. 



The nightjar is another bird which disdains a nest. It 

 may make use of some natural depression in the ground, 

 but as for scratching one for itself, the nightjar would 

 never do such a thing. The bare ground at the foot of 

 a fir-tree or under some furze bush is the favoured haunt 

 of this bird. 



The noddy, a species of tern, is a fool of a bird, yet it 

 goes a step further in the nest-building scale. Like the 



no 



