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Dr. A. G. Butler,



bird-life, to make notes as to the time occupied by our common

wild birds, as well as by the foreigners which nest in our

aviaries, in hatching their eggs ; I have thought it worth while

to collate the facts at my disposal, both with regard to those

groups of cage-birds respecting which little or nothing is yet

recorded, so far as I have been able to ascertain, and those about

which (chiefly through the agency of aviculturists) we have

definite records.


It seems hardly possible that the complete life-history of

such familiar wild birds as the British Thrushes ( Turdus) should

not be known : I feel satisfied that somewhere there must be a

record of the period of incubation of the Missel- and Song-

Thrushes, both of which have been bred in cages ; but hitherto

I have failed to discover it. I am under the impression, from my

own observations in bygone years, that it extends to thirteen or

fourteen days ; but alas ! I failed to write down the facts, and

memory unaided is sometimes unreliable.*


In 1891 Mr. J. E. Bertrand reared Blackbirds in captivity,

but he ignored the duration of the hatch, mentioning only that

the young left the nest when they were fifteen days old (Die

Gefiederte Welt, XX. p. 318).


Of the Wheatears, Chats, Warblers and Accentors I have

failed to find a record : an Accentor which built and laid in one

of my aviaries was unhappily unpaired, and consequently con¬

tinued to sit until I removed her eggs : possibly some of the

volumes of the ‘Gefiederte Welt’ which I do not possess might

give us some light ; but even in Germany comparatively few

European birds have been bred in captivity.


I have no record of the Dippers, the true Tits, Nuthatches,

Wagtails (though possibly there may be a record of the breeding

of these with the requisite details, in some volume of the

Proceedings of the Zoological Society not in my library).! Pipits

bred in aviaries (Gefiederte Welt, XX. p. 352) seem to have

hatched in twelve days, but the published details are not



* Professor W. E. D. Scott says of the Migratory Thrush, that it “ hatched eggs which had

been laid for some twelve days.” This is a trifle vague. “13-15 days” (Evans.)


+ I think this doubtful; inasmuch as in the old days, if not now, the bare mention of the

fact—“ Bred in the Gardens” was considered sufficient in most cases.



