on the Nesting of the Hawfinch.



33



I think that the adults must have devoured the egg-shells of

which I could not find a trace.


It was not till the 22nd that I obtained a good view of the

young which were most singular objects—three fine, healthy

nestlings, surrounded by a perfect halo of long white down, with

which the dark brown of the dorsal tract and the blackish flights

contrasted strongly ; they looked rather like young Sparrow-

hawks. I was annoyed to see that the nest, which I had fancied

so secure, had commenced to sag on one side; owing to the

situation selected by the adults it had not the advantage of what

engineers call “ three-point-suspension.” On the 23rd the com¬

bined weight of the adults and young proved too much for the

nest, half of which fell right away, but the young with much

philosophy, squatting side by side, balanced themselves skilfully

on what remained of their home. On the 24th—one of the few wet

days of this tropical summer—so little remained of the nest that

one squab was compelled to take up a crosswise position on the

backs of the other two, and the female, when brooding them,

had to sit 011 the top of this one. This led to a tragedy. On the

morning of the 251I1 I saw the female perched beside the nest

whittling away at something. Standing beneath the nest I could

see a ghastly, distorted corpse and no sign of the other young.

In course of time one becomes hardened to these shocks so, with

philosophic calm, I fetched a ladder to bear away my dead.

However, matters were not so bad as I had thought; the weight

of its superincumbent family had caused the smallest of the

young to be impaled on one of the formidable thorns of the

Pyracanthus , the other two had lost their hold on that part of

the nest, which alone remained in situ, and had slipped down

on to the collapsed part.


The corpse was so firmly impaled that it required a good

pull to dislodge it. This was evidently what the female had

been endeavouring to do, and some idea of the strength of her

mandibles may be obtained from the fact that she had whittled

away quite half of the squab’s beak, which was so stout that it

would have resisted a blunt knife. The squab weighed exacily

one ounce. Its beak (which was very large but more flattened

than that of an adult) and legs were pinkish. It was bare on



