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NOTES AND Q.UEBIES. 



AVES. 



Early Nesting of Dipper (Cinclus aquaticus). — A nest of this 

 species was found by W. Brown, from which four young ones were 

 hatched on March 13th. It was built on a broken brick wall of a 

 mill-sluice, connected with a large cotton mill, within the city. — T. L. 

 Johnston (Carlisle). 



Nesting Habits of the Wren (Troglodytes parvulus). — I have been 

 much interested in the notes that have appeared in the last two num- 

 bers of ' The Zoologist ' on this subject. From observations extending 

 over a number of years, I am inclined to think that the primary object 

 of the unlined nests is to protect the birds — both young and old — the 

 young just after they have left the lined nest where they were born, 

 and the old birds in severe weather. Being one of our smallest resident 

 birds, they are easily affected by stormy weather. Often after a sudden 

 night's frost I have found their dead bodies where they have been 

 caught away from their sheltered spots. On one occasion, in a shel- 

 tered ravine on an island in the West of Scotland, I found an unlined 

 nest containing the bodies of six mature Wrens ; the sixth had its 

 tail and part of its body protruding from the hole in the nest. All 

 the birds had been frozen to death. Wherever we find the habitat of 

 the Wren, we also find one or more of these unlined nests, which are 

 built at various times of the year. I have found them in process of 

 building during the autumn, and they are generally built before the 

 lined nest is begun ; in fact, the lined nest is placed in the vicinity of 

 the unlined nest, not the reverse. I have seen them built in all 

 manner of places — in hollow trees, in thatched roofs, in holes in walls, 

 amongst ivy, in beech-hedges, under branches of thick fir-trees, in 

 juniper-scrub, in thick clumps of bracken, between the wings of a dead 

 Crow hanging in a keeper's " larder," in haystacks, and in the out- 

 buildings of farmsteads, &c. Wherever the situation, it has always 

 been a sheltered one, and as a rule the building material has had a 

 wonderful semblance to the surroundings. It has occurred to me of 

 late years that the Wren is not so numerous in the north as it used 

 to be. — J. S. T. Walton (Sunniside, Stocksfield-on-Tyne). 



