Introduction. o 



until its second year; also that in this species the same birds return 

 annually to their previous winter quarters, the adults in pairs, accompanied 

 by a single offspring, while the birds of the preceding year associate 

 together in small societies. They also return annually to the same breeding 

 haunts, and repair their old nests as required, which was personally 

 witnessed by Mr. B. L. Layard in the instance of the Wattled Crane of South 



, Africa. The nest varies according to circumstances, but I suspect that 

 most cranes prefer to commence it in shallow water, accumulating a mass of 

 material to a height of several inches above the surface. Mr. T. Ayres 

 found a nest of the Wattled Crane {G. carunculata) " in a very large lagoon, 



' riear the Vaal river. The nest was about five feet in diameter, and of a 

 Conical form ; it was composed of rushes pulled up by the birds, and was 

 placed in water about five feet deep, the eggs being well out of the water : " 

 [Ibis, 1868, p. 468.) The Saras Crane {Q. antigone) nests in like manner, 

 and I have known a pair of tame Saras to build in a small inundated patch 



■ of rice ground, within the walled garden of a Hindoo Raja near Calcutta, 

 where secure from the rapacity of jackals. Mr. J. WoUey, jun., has 

 elaborately described the nesting of the Common Crane (6f. communis) in 

 Lapland, in the Ibis for 1859. But Mr. Gould states that the Australian 

 species {G, australasiana) breeds "on the ground, usually depositing its eggs 

 in a slight depression of the bare plains; though occasionally," he adds, 

 " the low swampy lands in the vicinity of the coast are resorted to for that 

 purpose.^' There is an excellent account of the breeding of the Demoiselle 

 Crane (6f. virgo) in the Dobrudscha by Mr. A. S. Cullen, in the Field for 

 Sept. 11, 1869, where it is remarked that "the nest is, without exception, 

 made on the ground, usually amidst some kind of young grain, but often 

 amongst grass on fallow land, and now and then, though more rarely, 

 amongst stubble. The nest, if indeed such it can be called, is made 

 by the birds pulling up or tearing down the grain, grass, or stubble for, the 

 space of about two feet, and scratching the smallest possible hollow in the 

 middle of the bare patch thus formed." A Demoiselle Crane has incubated 

 upon such a nest in a grass paddock in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's 

 Park, where other species have bred in like manner. Lastly, it may be 

 mentioned that Mr. Ayres met with a single nest of the Southern Crowned 

 Crane {Balearica regijilorum), which was " of a conical form, built in a 

 swamp, and placed in about the same depth of water as the nests of the 

 Crested Coot {Fulica cristata), which it also resembled in the rushes that had 

 been chosen as the materials for its construction." Mr. Ayres adds that he 

 thinks the nest was begun in shallower water, and added to as the season 

 advanced and the water increased in depth {Ibis, 1868, p. 256). No doubt 

 this must have been the case with the nest of the Wattled Crane described 

 by the same observer as being situate in 5ft. depth of water. 



As a rule, two eggs are produced ; but Mr. Hume remarks of the 



