OCCASIONAL NOTES. 401 
their old nest, and a Cuckoo deposited its egg in it. Mrs. Kelly saw the 
old Cuckoo leave the nest just after she had left the egg; and the bird has 
just been safely reared, and the Wagtails sitting again. No doubt they 
were the same Wagtails and the same Cuckoo, or possibly the young 
- Cuckoo that was reared last year. I shall not destroy the nest, and shall 
be anxious to see if the same thing takes place next year.—ReGinaLD 
Ke tty (Lifton, Devon). {Communicated by Mr. Gatcombe.] 
Tenacity or Lire 1x younc House Martins.—The following curious 
instance of tenacity of life, which came under his own observation, was 
recently related to me by my friend Mr. F. Kitton. On the Ist of July, 
a bricklayer, in cleaning the gutter round Mr. Kitton’s house, knocked down 
a Martin’s nest, which fell to the ground with its contents, three very young 
birds and a nest-egg. The remains of the nest and young birds were 
swept away with the rubbish from the gutter and thrown into the bin, 
where they remained till Sunday morning, when the nestlings were heard 
chirping by Mr. Kitton’s children, and taken out. The children then fed 
* them with sopped bread, which they took readily, but died on the following 
morning. Mr. Kitton estimates that these young birds lived entirely 
without food and deprived of the warmth of the nest and parent bird for 
sixty-two hours, and that from the time of their violent ejectment from 
their nest to their death a period of eighty-six hours intervened. Shortly 
before Mr. Kitton mentioned this incident to me I had been reading 
Prof. Newton’s remarks, in the last part of his new edition of Yarrell’s 
‘ British Birds’ (p. 352 and foot-note), upon the cause of the death of late 
broods of Martins, so often found in their deserted nests, and it struck me 
that if this tenacity of life in the young of these birds is the rule it would 
account for much that has heretofore been matter of surprise to me. There 
can be no doubt that Prof. Newton’s remarks apply to most of the in- 
sectivorous birds; but do the Swallows form an exception to the rule? 
‘I never attempted to rear any young birds, but on one occasion the nest of 
a Blackcap Warbler, which was placed in a climbing rose in my garden and 
contained young ones, becoming displaced by the wind, I was astonished in 
how short a time the young ones perished. Now J imagine that most of our 
insect-feeding birds would be able to obtain a supply of food for their young 
ones, under fences and from other sheltered localities, on many a day when 
the Hirundinide, which take their food on the wing in open spaces, would 
have the greatest difficulty in securing the supply needful for five hungry 
mouths. Most of us can call to mind any number of such occasions during 
the past two summers, wheu the poor Martins have been seen hawking in 
the cold and wet, looking sadly uncomfortable and out of place. It must 
also be borue in mind that the young birds would at this time probably be 
deprived of the warmth of the parent bird, as it would require the united 
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