374 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



window, in partitioned boxes placed for them in the same vicinity, and 

 elsewhere about my premises. Previously to the recent severe winters 

 it was but rarely that less than twelve pairs bred in the places named. 

 This year the number has risen from the two pairs of the springs succeeding 

 those hard winters to five pairs, all of them nesting in the ivy or the boxes ; 

 and this year again, as in all former years, the eggs on the lawn, as noted 

 by Mr. Cambridge, have been repeatedly observed. One day I picked up 

 three, one entirely uninjured, a second with a hole in the side similar to 

 the hole made by a Crow in a hen's or duck's egg when found and carried off 

 by him in his bill, and the third much broken. My impression has been 

 for years that these eggs — almost invariably carried away for from fifteen to 

 thirty yards, not simply dropped as if thrown out from the nest — were so 

 dealt with as the accompaniment, or at least the result, of some squabble 

 among the occupants of the adjacent nest-places. That the Starlings do 

 squabble, and carry on their scrimmages with some tenacity, moreover, 

 almost goes without saying. I have seen them once and again actually fall 

 in their resolute mutual squabbles on to the gravel terrace below their 

 nests, and lie there, still grasping each other and struggling, for minutes. 

 Once not long since one of my children went out to part a couple which 

 had so fallen, or if not to pick them up. They lay with panting breasts 

 and gaping bills until her hand was all but on them, and flew up into the 

 ivy again. They fight on the chimney tops, too, and some half-dozen or 

 half-score times within the last twenty years one of the combatants has come 

 blundering down the chimney into the bed-room below, sometimes rather to 

 the alarm or discomfiture of the occupant, if a child or a stranger. Nor is the 

 "peculiar habit" limited to the eggs, in ray experience. Young unfledged 

 birds are dealt with on the same principle, and only this year I have seen 

 two young Starlings, still in the down, sprawling on the grass. Here let 

 me mention one other fact. My youngest son this year placed a Starling's 

 egg under one of his tame Pigeons. The egg was duly hatched, and the 

 young Starling fed by the Pigeon until it had grown to nearly its full size 

 for leaving the nest. Unluckily he then took it into his head that the 

 Pigeon did not feed its fosterling adequately, and began to supplement 

 the feeding himself, but not with any knowledge of what the young Starling 

 ought to be fed with, or when or how ; and it consequently died — I think 

 from nothing but injudicious dieting. If the bird had lived to fly, some 

 interesting observations might perhaps have been made. — J. C. Atkinson 

 (Danby Parsonage). 



Egyptian Nightjar in Nottinghamshire. — On the SiSrd June last 

 my keeper shot at a rabbit in Thieves Wood, near Mansfield, and at 

 the report of the gun a Nightjar flew out of the edge of the wood. Its 

 light colour attracting his attention, he fired his other barrel at it and 

 brought it down. Thinking it only a young bird, he did not send it to me, 



