NOTES AND QUERIES. 299 



of the day that the third egg was laid, his place being taken next morning 

 by the hen, who went on and laid her fourth egg, and this arrangement was 

 kept up all during incubation, which lasted twenty-three days, viz. the cock 

 sitting all night and the hen all day. To my mind this is an extremely 

 interesting fact : the brightly plumaged cock sitting during the dark hours, 

 and the hen, with her protective colouring, sitting during the day. The 

 breeding males did not begin to change their breeding plumage for the pro- 

 tective breeding plumage until after the young were hatched. As soon as 

 the young were out of the nest (when twelve hours old) a very curious habit 

 developed itself in the male. He would rub his breast violently up and down 

 on the ground, a motion quite distinct from dusting, and when all awry he 

 would get into his drinking water and saturate the feathers of the under 

 parts. When soaked he would go through the motions of flying away, nodding 

 his head, &c. Then, remembering his family were close by, would run up to 

 the hen, make a demonstration, when the young would run out, get under 

 him, and suck the water from his breast. This is no doubt the way that 

 water is conveyed to the young when hatched far out on waterless plains. 

 The young, which are most beautiful little creatures, and very difficult to 

 see even in an aviary, are very independent, eating hard seed and weeds 

 from the first, and roosting independently of their parents at ten days 

 old.— E. G. B. Meade-Waldo (Rope Hill, Lymington, Hants). 



The Coloration of Pallas's Shrike. — Some years ago (vide Zool. 1890, 

 p. 27 ; 1891, p. 187 ; 1892, p. 112) I wrote three notes in ' The Zoologist' 

 upon Grey Shrikes, and especially upon the colour of the rump of Lanius 

 major, in which I disputed the statement that the adult male of this form 

 had a white rump. I have recently examined about a dozen examples of 

 L. major in Norwegian museums, and found that in every case the rump 

 was grey. In the case of several of these examples there was an entire 

 absence of the semi-crescentic dark marks on the under parts, which have 

 been said to characterize this species at all ages. Doubtless these were 

 fully adult examples, and they prove that the adult L. major resembles the 

 adult of L. excubitor in this respect. I examined the bird killed in Nor- 

 way, and recorded as " hardly distinguishable " from a female of L. borealis 

 (cf. 1892, p. 113), and I believe it is nothing more than an unsually brown 

 example of L. major in immature dress. — O. V. Aplin (Bloxham, Oxon). 



Birds and Garden Peas. — The rows of peas in our kitchen garden here 

 have been so punished that my gardener quite gave up one long row, 

 having all the peas in it taken, and in several others quite half. I put it 

 down to Hawfinches, which have for several years nested near, and taken 

 a fair share ; but as the destruction was so great, I watched, and was much 

 surprised to see two old Great Tits fly down and punch a hole through the 

 pod, and, after flying up into a fruit tree, take the skin off the pea, then 



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