VOL. XIII.] NOTES. 83 



from their nesting-boxes, and lay its own eggs on the bare 

 floor of the box. In May 1919 a Wrjaieck was seen looking 

 into a box containing young Coal-Tits about one day old. 

 Two days later, I saw a Wryneck emerge from this box 

 with its beak full of rabbit-fur, and found the young Tits 

 dead on the ground below, with the greater part of the nest. 

 The Wrynecks removed the whole nest piecemeal, but did 

 not occupy the box. There were several vacant boxes close at 

 hand, so " economic pressure " cannot be the explan.ation. 



These Wrynecks began to lay on June 8th, in another 

 box sixty yards away. They had certainly not tried to 

 breed in any other box previously, though they arrived, 

 as usual, in m.id-April. The fact that I found half-grovvn 

 young in the same garden on June 25th, 191 2, and again on 

 June 22nd, 1914, suggests that they arrive some time before 

 they begin to nest. (I have also found young ones as late 

 as August 1st, 1909.) In 1912 the box they occupied con- 

 tained six addled eggs and three young ones, but as there 

 is no attempt at a nest, the heat during incubation must 

 be very uncertain. This year I visited the box on several 

 occasions when the bird was on, both before and after the 

 clutch was complete, and on no occasion was she covering 

 the eggs completely. Twice I found her sitting beside 

 the eggs, and once half-covering them, with three eggs 

 plainly visible beside her. Unfortunately, I was unable to 

 keep systematic records of this throughout the incubation 

 period. 



On the autumn migration I have several records of this 

 bird alongshore between July 28th and September 4th, 

 mainly in furze bushes, but its passage is, of course, very 

 difficult to observe. J. K. Stanford. 



Since 1907 until the present year I have kept notes so far 

 as I have had time to do so on a number of nesting-boxes 

 near Tenterden in S.W. Kent. The boxes available have 

 always been in excess of the demand, and yet out of the 

 eight years in which a pair of Wrynecks {Jynx t. torquilla) 

 have nested in them, only twice have they done so without 

 previousl}' evicting one or more pairs of Tits. In some 

 years they emptied three different boxes before finding 

 one to suit them, in others after emptying one or two they 

 have eventually laid in a previously unoccupied one. In 

 this district the laying of the first Qgg works out pretty 

 constantly at about May 20th. 



In another instance that came under my notice, where 

 there were only two nesting-boxes in a town garden, a pro- 



