116 BRITISH BIRDS. [vol. vin. 



white butterflies. A point that struck me particularly was 

 that the parents would not keep food in the beak long, but 

 swallowed it themselves and immediately began to search 

 for more. I saw them swalloAV wasps and butterflies as well 

 as small flies when I purposely kept them from the nest. 

 Very often the food, if it had been held in the beak a short 

 time, was covered with a kind of saliva when given to the 

 young. 



A very interesting point is that after the young are twelve 

 days old they are not brooded during the night. In July 

 the whole brood in one nest I was watchmg perished during 

 a very wet, stormy night on this account. 



Another point worth noting is that when the young more 

 than fill the cup of the nest, they are not fed in sequence, 

 that is to say, if two are in the cup and two standing above 

 the level of it, these two are fed continually until either 

 they are satisfied, or the two in the cup get very hungry, 

 and then these two work their way up and are fed. 



When the young leave the nest a little do^vn is still visible 

 along the back and back of the head. The interior of the 

 mouth is then yellow and the flanges are yellow inside but 

 nearly white outside. The base of the tongue has spurs, 

 and the palate at the back of the mouth has tooth-like 

 projections. The spotting of the young is very much more 

 marked than in the parents, and the spots on the breasts 

 of the young vary considerably, being very much darker 

 in some than others, even in the same brood. J. H. Owen. 



WHITETHROAT USING SUPPLEMENTARY NEST. 



On May 1st, 1914, my friend Mr. L. Miles found a White- 

 throat's {Sylvia c. communis) nest which was then nearly 

 completed. Several subsequent visits were paid to the 

 place, but it was not until June 14th, when I accompanied 

 my friend to the nest, that it was found to contain a single 

 fresh egg. This would appear to be an instance of the use 

 of a supplementary nest for breeding purposes. 



Howard Bentham. 



[Mr. H. Eliot Howard {Brit. Warblers, pt. 4, p. 12) records 

 a period of from six to eleven days as elapsing between the 

 arrival of the female and the laying of the flrst egg. Mr. J. 

 Whitaker {Zool., 1895, p. 310) mentions a case in which a 

 Whitethroat was observed to sit in a completed nest for 

 fifteen days before an egg was laid. Neither of these cases 

 approaches the period of about forty-four days recorded 

 above.— F.C. R.J. ] 



