REVIEWS. 63 



of a pair of Blue Titmice using a bottle in a tree as a nesting 

 site for a hundred years, and it may be of interest to record 

 here a case of a migrant species using the same nesting site 

 for certainly sixty years. This was in the village of Burley, 

 Hampshire, where a pair of Wrynecks occupied year after year 

 a hole in a hollow branch of an apple tree in a cottager's 

 garden. One winter the branch was blown down, but John 

 King, the occupant of the cottage, took great pride in his 

 Wrynecks, and bethought himself of the expedient of cutting 

 off the portion of the branch in which the birds nested and 

 fixing a tin roof over one end to keep the hollow weather 

 tight. This natural " nesting box" he placed in the original 

 tree, and when spring came round the Wrynecks took to it 

 at once and continued to nest there for many more years. 

 The end was tragic. King had a spiteful neighbour, who, 

 seemingly from motives of pure jealousy, and knowing the 

 old man's pride in the Wrynecks, one summer about five 

 years ago shot both the old birds. John King is over eighty 

 years of age, and has been a keen observer of nature all his 

 life (he has lived largely by the chase!) and remembers well 

 his father, who had the cottage before him, showing him the 

 Wrynecks many a time when he was a boy. The sitting bird 

 was so tame that it did not in the least mind being handled 

 and was often brought out of the hole to be shown off, while 

 Tits which sometimes took possession of the place were 

 ruthlessly turned out and their nests destroyed before the 

 time of the Wryneck's arrival. 



In such a case as this, equally with that of the Blue Tit, 

 the birds must have both returned to the nesting place so 

 long as both survived, and as it is not possible to believe that 

 the same birds lived for fifty or sixty years the surviving 

 partner (both birds of the pair we must presume never died in 

 the same winter) must have brought a new mate, whether 

 male or female, to the old nesting place. Is it not likely, too, 

 that migrants which nest in a particular place year after year, 

 also winter in company with one another. With cases such as 

 the foregoing before us, it does not seem reasonable to suppose 

 that such birds find new mates at each breeding season. In 

 any case, it would appear unsafe to argue, as Mr. Howard does, 

 without due regard to this point as a possible factor. It may 

 account for some of the apparent want of selection on the 

 part of the female Blackcap, for according to Mr. Howard's 

 observations, she takes no notice whatever of the " extravagant 

 bodily actions" of the male, nor is she influenced by his 

 wonderful song, since directly she arrives this is changed as a 



