VMbia ft') 
1909 
March 30 
Rapir 
clutch ? 
of 
Bluebirds 1 
e£gs 
table 
+ **n> + *i*i* + * 
One of my bird boxes has been occupied every season 
by Bluebirds ever since it was first put up, eight or ten 
years ago, in a solitary apple tree in a field across the 
road. I usually clear it out every autumn but this has 
been neglected for the past two years. As James was pruning 
the tree to-day I asked him to do it. 
On opening the box he said it contained "a new nest 
full of eggs". Before I could stop him he had taken out 
literally a handfu l of them. I made him put them back and 
bring them down in the nest. It looked perfectly new and 
fresh and contained no less than eleven eggs , two broken 
by his clumsy handling. This, with the nine whole ones, 
were covered with fly specks and the contents coagulated 
or dried and in one end. Evidently they had all been laid 
last year . An older nest (that of 1907, no doubt) under 
the other, held two unhatched but badly stained and broken 
eggs. To acid to the mystery of this discovery, a pair of 
Bluebirds were flying close about and scolding us all the 
time we were at the tree. After we had left it, taking 
both nests and all the eggs, the female alighted at the hole 
and looked in, then flew away. 
/ 
