NATURE NOTES 
I i6 
companion’s tail. No other mouse could possibly have entered the cage, as the 
wires were far too close together. The wounded mouse ultimately recovered, 
but never again shared its former friend’s home. 
C. M. Duppa. 
Blackbird Nesting Twice in Same Nest. —It may perhaps interest 
some of your readers to have a short history of a pair of blackbirds and their nest- 
ing arrangements this spring. In my garden, in Edinburgh, a nest was built in 
March in a low and very bushy fir-tree, a singularly snug place. The birds sat 
through various slight snowstorms and intense frost, one or other of them seldom 
leaving the nest for an instant. They had only two eggs, and succeeded in 
hatching both, and two fine little birds were duly fledged and taken away, we 
think, info a neighbouring garden close by, as we have never seen them since the 
day they left the nest. The old birds seemed very busy and quite happy, never 
being long absent from the lawn on which the fir-tree grows, but evidently 
feeding the young ones somewhere. At the end of a week I observed the hen 
bird sitting in the old nest. She has again laid two eggs, and is now sitting as 
closely as before. Her mate spends most of his time sitting in a tree near by, singing 
to her, but flies away at intervals, as we suppose, to feed the young ones. He 
always flies in the same direction, and occasionally, with much chattering and 
flying about, persuades the hen to go with him for a very few minutes. Is it not 
very unusual for birds, excepting, of course, swallows, starlings, and sparrows, to 
use the same nest twice ? 
C. J. W. 
Cuckoo. — From a reliable source, I hear of a cuckoo’s egg laid on April 21. 
No doubt this is very early. 
Market Weston, Thetford. Edmund Thomas Daubeny. 
A Cuckoo “Myth.” — I have a perfect recollection of seeing the young 
cuckoo throw the young hedge-sparrows out of the nest at Hayes, getting its 
back, which is very broad and flat, under the young bird and backing it up over 
the side. I cannot understand how people can go on arguing the question for 
generations. There is not much difficulty in getting a cuckoo’s egg, or a nest to 
have it hatched in. I took four cuckoos’ eggs in one day at I'ritton decoy 
from reed birds’ nests. I remember hatching one in a greenfinches’ nest at 
Hayes : it took full possession though I did not see the process, but died in a few 
days, as the old birds fed it on seeds. 
Waverley, New Zealand, March 3, 1899. Owen Hawes. 
Sister as Foster-Mother. — I saw a strange thing at one of the hotels 
in Waverley, yesterday. A hen which had a brood of chickens a few months 
back had hatched off another lot and died, or was killed when they were a few 
days old, when a pullet of her previous brood, about three-parts grown, took 
charge, and is a capital mother, clucking, &c., like an old hen. I never 
heard of such a thing before and should think it is almost unique. 
Waverley, New Zealand, March 26, 1899. Owen Hawes. 
Co-operation among Swallows.— We are situated on a hill side, quite 
away from any other house, and are annually resorted to by several swallows 
who build their nests under the eaves of our house. Last spring (1898) we had 
about ten nests round the house : one pair of birds chose a quiet corner to build 
in, just over our bedroom windows, the which are casements opening outwards, 
and conseciuently we objected to the mess they made and removed the first 
patches of mud affixed to the cement wall : the birds repeated the operation, 
and we as regularly knocked it off. This performance continued for some days. 
At length the birds appeared to have determined to have their own way. We 
went away from home for the day, amf on our return found they had succeeded 
in fixing up nearly half a nest : we therefore watched the proceeding. 
We have a small pond, about thirty or forty feet from the house, and we 
found all the bird friends who had built around had evidently been called in to 
help in the emergency, for there were now some fourteen or fifteen, or more, 
going backwards and forwards from the pond to the disputed corner, always 
bringing their mouths full of mud from the pond and depositing it on the house 
until in a very short time the nest was complete, and the meeting scparateil 
