4286 Birds. 



watching for an unguarded egg of the guillemot, and when they have 

 found one, charge at it, using their beak as a lance, and, bearing it 

 away on the tip, suck out all the goodness as they go.* The same 

 amusing writer says that the raven carries off eggs, but in a different 

 manner, seizing them in all probability with the feet. 



All these are the devices of thieves, whereby they seek to appro- 

 priate to themselves the lawful property of others, and very various 

 and in many cases very ingenious they are, but the legitimate owner 

 of the egg, when she wishes to remove her treasure, can adopt none 

 of these methods : if she attempted any of them, she would certainly 

 break the shell and at once destroy her hopes of progeny. Yet occa- 

 sionally she finds cause to apprehend danger, and devises means to 

 remove her eggs safely. Stanley affirms that pheasants and skylarks 

 will often, when alarmed, carry off their eggs and form a new nest. 

 Hewitson relates how the dunlin contrived to carry off her eggs before 

 his return to the nest, which he had discovered but a short time pre- 

 viously. Selby gives an account of some moorhens removing the 

 eggs from their nest on the sudden rising of the water on whose mar- 

 gin they had built it, heightening the fabric with all possible despatch 

 by adding fresh material, and then replacing the eggs in the nest now 

 raised above danger. Yarrell describes how some partridges, perceiv- 

 ing the imminent danger and almost certain destruction to their eggs 

 from the advancing plough, contrived to remove them in about twenty 

 minutes to a distance of forty yards : and again, quoting from 

 Audubon, how the spotted sandpiper filched away her eggs from the 

 supposed place of security in which the finder had laid them. 



These are all well-authenticated instances of eggs being removed to 

 a place of greater security by the parent birds, but hitherto we have 

 seen no solution to the question how that removal was effected. I 

 proceed to prove that it is done by means of the beak, of which 

 I myself was on one occasion an eyewitness. It was many years ago, 

 when I was an Eton boy at home for the Easter holidays, and in the 

 month of March, when the hedges were yet almost bare of leaves, that 

 to my great joy I discovered in a thorn-hedge the first nest that I had 

 seen that year, a hedge accentor's, containing four blue eggs, and the 

 bird sitting thereon. Either not wishing to take it, or more probably 

 hoping by patience to secure a larger prize, I contented myself with a 

 long look at the treasure and withdrew, but still again and again the 

 recollection of my discovery attracted me to the spot, where I 



*' Letters of Rusticus.' 



