NOTES AND QUERIES. 393 



to their young in a chimney just below me, and it seemed to me that there 

 were more than a pair of birds engaged in the operation. I therefore got 

 out my binoculars, and found that one of the birds was a young one. and 

 it came several times with food and went into the chimney. Shortly after 

 three birds (two old and one young) perched on the chimney, and one after 

 the other went down to the nest. There certainly were not two nests, as 

 several times two birds were together on the chimney, and one always 

 waited until the other had returned from the nest before it went down, and 

 further, one was undoubtedly a young (male) bird. A second time the 

 three birds came and perched together on the chimney, and followed each 

 other in the same way down to the nest. I watched the birds for more 

 than an hour, and came to the conclusion that the young of the first brood 

 do occasionally assist in feeding those of the second brood. The nest was 

 evidently in a corner of the chimney not very far down, as they all went to 

 the same spot. — H. St. B. Goldsmith (King's Square, Bridgewater). 



[We have seen young Moorhens of a first brood feeding the young of a 

 second brood, under circumstances which left no room for doubt that both 

 broods belonged to the same pair of old birds. — Ed.] 



Nesting Habits of the Dipper. — Mr. Ellison, in his interesting article 

 on the nesting habits of the Dipper (p. 314), says that the nest is never 

 placed in a tree. The Editor draws attention to three instances of Dippers 

 nesting in trees, recorded in ' The Zoologist ' for 1888, and in the same 

 magazine for September (p. 352) two other instances are recorded ; to these 

 I can add three more which have come under my observation during the 

 last few years. In 1886 I found a nest, quite unsupported by any lateral 

 branches, built upon the slanting trunk of an ash-tree, at a height of about 

 two feet from the water. In 1889 I found another nest in an alder-tree, 

 the nest being supported and partly hidden by small lateral branches. The 

 tree in which the nest was built had been uprooted by winter storms, and 

 lay across the stream at an angle of about 45°: the nest was about five 

 feet above the water. Last May I found the most curious nest of all ; this 

 was placed on the bare horizontal branch of a large ash-tree, at a height of 

 about eight feet above the water, and was a very bulky structure, being 

 easily seen at a distance of some hundreds of yards. I was very much 

 amused last April at what appeared to be very clumsy architecture on the 

 part of a pair of Dippers ; they had constructed their nest in a crevice in 

 the stonework of a bridge. Putting my fingers into the nest, I felt the 

 sharp edge of a stone projecting through the usual lining of dead leaves ; 

 of course I concluded the nest was not yet finished. Visiting it again 

 some days later I found one egg had been deposited ; the sharp edge of the 

 stone still projected ! Eventually I fouud that the bird had only laid two 

 eggs in this uncomfortable nest, one of which lay awkwardly upon the top 

 ZOOLOGIST. OCTOBER, 1890. 2 Q 



