272 



THE ZOOLOGIST. 



the Duck, as the following incident will show : In 1901 Mr. Robert 

 Patterson recorded the nesting of the Wigeon near Belfast. The bird 

 was not identified, but eggs and down agreed with those of that bird. 

 This record was accepted everywhere until two years later, when the 

 same gentleman wrote and contradicted the statement, as on further 

 examination of the down the small feathers found therein proved the 

 nest to be that of the Shoveler. It may be of interest to state that 

 a Wigeon nested in the early summer of 1907 on the private lake of a 

 friend of mine in North Lancashire. On the lake, which is natural 

 and of considerable size, he placed a pair of pinioned birds of which 

 the female shook off her pinions almost at once, and disappeared 

 for some weeks to reappear with a brood of young, which she had 

 apparently hatched on a smaller lake in the vicinity. The drake 

 remained on the large lake all the time, being finally shot accidentally 

 at the flight as recently as last November, when he too had appa- 

 rently just shaken off his pinions, judging from the tremendous height 

 at which he was flying. Incidentally it may be mentioned that these 

 young Wigeon and their mother were as wild as possible, far more so 

 than the foreign birds which arrived in the autumn, and not one of 

 them was shot. Did Messrs. Thorpe and Hope actually see the bird 

 settling on her eggs, or only near the nest ? If the latter only, that 

 is no evidence of the nest being her own, just as my evidence of the 

 brood there on July 13th is of little value, as the brood might have 

 been that of a Mallard or some other species following what was 

 undoubtedly a hen Wigeon. — H. W, Robinson (Lansdowne House, 

 Lancaster). 



Redshank (Totanus calidris) carrying Young (?). — Mr. A. H. Pat- 

 terson, in his Notes on Mud-flat Birds, says (ante, p. 211), "Whether 

 it [the Redshank] carries its young as the Woodcock does at times I 

 am not sure, but I strongly suspect it." Facts have come to my 

 knowledge which I think go to prove that this is not the case. Red- 

 shanks have of recent years nested close to the town of Stafford, and 

 between the Sewage Farm they frequent and a small muddy pond, 

 close to which there is generally a nest, runs a main road, upon which 

 there is much traffic. A few years ago, and again this year, after the 

 young were hatched, the old birds have been seen in great distress 

 owing to their not being able to get their young ones across this high 

 road, and on both occasions the young have been caught by a humane 

 signalman, who occupies a signal-box on the railway close by, and 

 carried to the sewage marsh, apparently to the great satisfaction of 

 the parent birds. Now if the Redshank carried its young I think the 



