130 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



excavation is always commenced horizontally ; then, if the birds 

 are in earnest, the hewing of the downward shaft is begun, and 

 not many holes are abandoned after that. I have known a Wood- 

 pecker use the same hole a second year, and that in spite of its 

 having been enlarged with a knife ; but it is not usual. Neither 

 is it usual to find the eggs stained, but that also occasionally 

 happens. When they leave the nest-hole the young Woodpeckers 

 are profusely mottled, but their first feathers drop off, except 

 those of the tail, wings, and crown of the head, and are replaced 

 by new ones — no change of colour, but a new feather. 



12th. — The circumstance of ten Mute Swan cygnets in one 

 brood at Keswick, and of two pinioned Wild Ducks laying seventy 

 eggs between them, is perhaps not worth detailing; but the 

 rearing of a nest of young Kestrels in St. Benedict's Church, in 

 the middle of Norwich (S. Long), is of much local interest. A 

 black egg of a Partridgef was laid near Fakenham, in a nest with 

 other eggs of the ordinary colour (A. Digby), very undersized, 

 and literally quite black, with an olive tint and some faint specks 

 at both ends. A Corn-Crake at Northrepps had eight eggsf on 

 the railway embankment in a circle of hay-bents beneath a small 

 Dock, and two Nightingales' nestsf in St. John's Wort were very 

 pretty. Mr. Southwell writes of five Ring-Dotterel's eggs in one 

 nest on April 12th, one more than customary ; and a Wild Duck's 

 nest in a tree provokes the usual wonder as to how the young get 

 down. More Hungarian Partridges' eggs were sent over by Karl 

 Gudera, of Lower Austria, and 64 per cent, hatched out by a 

 gentleman in West Norfolk ; but it was not a good Partridge 

 year, although, as will be mentioned presently, the unaccountable 

 spangled race again turned up, and that on the Bylaugh estate, 

 where *' Hungarians " have never been turned down. 



The above are the principal nesting notes, with the excep- 

 tion that two young Cuckoos were reared by Hedge-Sparrows at 

 Northrepps, and in one case both foster-parents took part in 

 feeding the nestling. This youngster was quite equal to a mouth- 

 ful a minute, by my watch, but, not staying long in one place, it 

 became evident that other birds, on whom it had no claim, must 

 have contributed to its wants ; and no doubt this still went on 

 after it was full-grown. In making out lists of Cuckoos* 

 fosterers this habit needs to be remembered, and in a former 



