D. Seth-Smith—Stray Notes



89



American birds with very extraordinary breeding habits. A fall

account of these birds, and of their nesting and rearing young in

captivity, appeared in the Avicultural Magazine for August and

October, 1904, and with the first of these instalments appeared a

coloured plate of the adult and newly hatched chick. In the

Tinamous the female is the larger and more vigorous bird, and

she courts the male, who incubates the eggs and rears the

young; but the duties of the female Tinamou are not finished

for the season when she has laid one clutch of eggs. She takes

no further interest in male No. 1, but looks around with much

calling for male No. 2, and having found him she lays a second clutch

of eggs, which he proceeds to incubate, and in all probability, in the

wild state, this is repeated with two or three more males. In

the case of the Tataupas bred in 1904, no less than fourteen

young birds were reared in the one season from a single female

and two males. When male No. 1 commenced to incubate his

batch of four pink eggs, the female was transferred to another

compartment of the aviary, in which was male No. 2. She

promptly set about nesting again, and laid him a clutch, and by the

time he had sat out his period of twenty-one days the brood hatched

by No. 1 were nearly reared and the female was allowed to go back

to her first mate. The third clutch of eggs followed and was hatched

by No. 1, and subsequently a fourth which No. 2 eventually hatched.

This habit of polyandry in birds is not confined to the Tinamous ;

it obtains also in the Hemipodes, or Bustard Quails, and probably in

other species, such as the Phalaropes and Painted Snipe, in which the

female is the larger and more brightly coloured of the two sexes.


Chukot* Partridges.— Mr. Maurice Portal writes : “ I have a pair

of Cretan Chukor Partridges (Caccabis saxatilis) breeding in the garden.

The nest is made by scraping out a round hole, some six inches deep,

which both birds work at by turning round and round in it. The cock

then collects a leaf or piece of straw, and tosses it back over his shoulders

to the hen, who takes it and puts it in the nest, which is a very rough

affair. She lays daily, but for some reason the cock goes on the nest

every day for a bit. They desert very easily. I removed three eggs

at the top, using a spoon for the purpose, as there were twelve in the



