COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. 
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manured pasture, forms a perfect paradise for a Hoopoe! 
The nest was built, the eggs were laid and hatched, and 
the young birds were growing grandly, when evil Fate 
approached in the form of a boy. The young urchin 
watched his opportunity, and attacking the nest, while 
the mother was engaged feeding the almost-fledged 
nestlings, captured both her and her young. He brought 
them to us, and mother and children were stuffed. The 
bereaved widower was inconsolable, and wandered hither 
and thither in search of the lost ones, calling, “ hup, 
hup,” in the most moving tones, not taking any 
nourishment; he kept seeking and calling, seeking and 
calling. This he did unremittingly the whole of the 
first day; and if, perchance, on the next, he renewed 
exhausted nature with a morsel here and there,—which, 
indeed, I very much doubt,—his sorrow remained 
unabated, till, at last, finding all search fruitless, he left 
the neighbourhood for ever. 
Other males will remain by the spot where their nest 
once was, or where they have lost their mate, as though 
they could not give up the hope of meeting her—or, 
possibly, another—again. 
The female of a pair of Peregrine Falcons, which breed 
regularly on the “ Falcon’s Rock,” in the forest of 
Thuringen, was once shot, and the nest harried; and 
yet the solitary widower still frequented the barren 
pinnacle of that splendid rock, bereft of all that was dear 
to him. It appears to me, also, quite probable, that a 
Peregrine, whose female partner I shot on the top of the 
Pyramid of Cheops, was the same that I found there two 
years later provided with another mate. It, doubtless, 
never quitted the locality, and had met with the reward 
due to its perseverance. 
