NOTES AND QUERIES. 137 



one of last year's birds from Norfolk. — George W. Bradshaw (54, 

 London Street, Reading). 



Fecundity in Birds. — Respecting Mr. Basil Daviess very inter- 

 esting article on the Fecundity in Birds (' The Zoologist,' 1898, p. 495) 

 I should like, if I may, to make a few remarks, and to ask some 

 questions, hoping that Mr. Davies will not resent the liberty T am 

 taking in doing so. In Section I. (dealing with Finches, Buntings, and 

 the larger Warblers) he writes : — " It is not, I think, difficult to see why 

 they respectively lay their live and ten* eggs a season. These birds, 

 resident and migratory alike, feed their young on' various forms of insect- 

 life. . . . The two parents would be unequal to catering for the wants of a 

 larger brood than five. Neither could a hen of this size well produce more 

 than five eggs." Now, the fact that insectivorous birds can rear a con- 

 siderably larger brood than five is clearly demonstrated by the Tits, Wrens, 

 and small Warblers (Chiffchaff, &c), as is also the fact that a bird of half 

 the size of a Bunting can and does produce more than five eggs. Lower 

 down, in Section II., he writes : — " Another point is that eight young Tits 

 would hardly require more food that five greedy little Robins, and so the 

 labours of the parents in the two species would not differ appreciably." 

 And again, in discussing the smaller Warblers : — " Here again it is no 

 more difficult to feed eight small Warblers than five large ones." Now, it 

 seems to me that, though ten young Golden-crested Wrens (for instance) 

 might not require altogether a greater quantity of food than five young 

 Robins, yet, as the minuteness of the food would be in proportion to the 

 smallness of the bird, each young Gold-crest would require to be fed the 

 same number of times a day with gnats as a young Robin would with cater- 

 pillars (or even more) ; therefore the ten of them would give their parents 

 twice as much work to do as would the five young Robins. In the introduction 

 to Col. Montagu's ' Dictionary of British Birds ' an account is given of a 

 female Gold-crest feeding its eight young ones, which were placed in a cage 

 upon the window-sill. The bird brought food every one and a half to two 

 minutes during sixteen hours of the day. A friend once timed a Robin to 

 and from its young, and found that there was an interval of about ten 

 minutes between the visits. So that, as far as catering powers are con- 

 cerned, it would seem that a Robin might easily rear more that five young 

 ones. Mr. Davies suggests that our migratory Warblers do not produce a 

 second brood, owing to the near approach of the migration period. This 

 argument is broken down by the Swallow kind, all of which produce a 

 second brood. In Section VI., on Doves and Pigeons, Mr. Davies says: 

 , — "I have only the old hackneyed explanation for the unvarying pair of 



* The ten here refers to two separate broods of five. — B. R. 



