Why should the dabchick, after the hatching of its eggs, leave its own nest, in which it has hitherto sat, and sit in those of another bird? I examined the nest thus deserted, and found it to be sinking down in the water, which was still more the case with some other and older ones. This, I believe, is the answer to the above question. The bird’s own nest is no longer quite comfortable, and others are to hand which are more so. Having stayed, therefore, as long as its incubatory instinct prompts it to, it resorts to these, and being no longer tied to one, uses several. But a habit at one time of the year, might be extended to another time, and if certain dabchicks were to take to sitting in the nests of moorhens, before they had made their own, some of these birds, whose nest-building instinct was weaker than in most, or who, finding themselves in a nest, imagined that they had made it themselves—which, I think, is possible—might conceivably lay their eggs there. It would then, in my opinion, be more likely that the usurping bird should remain, and hatch out, possibly, with its own, some one or more eggs of the bird it had dispossessed, than that the contrary process should come about.[34] However, the first business of a field naturalist (“and such a one do I profess myself”) is to make out what does occur, and this I have tried to do.

I think it curious that neither of the two pairs of birds that I watched, hatched out, apparently, more than three of their eggs. The first pair certainly did not, and I saw the fourth egg in the nest of the second, after the birds had left it for another one, though my notes do not make it clear if it continued to lie there or not. I think it did not, but, at any rate, I never could make out more than three chicks together, with either one or both of the birds. It struck me that, after the family had left the nest, there was a tendency for the parents to divide, one taking two chicks, and the other the remaining one, since they could not take them two and two. It interested me, therefore, to come, now and again, on one of another pair of dabchicks, sitting in the nest—or a nest—with one half-grown chick only. Whenever I saw them, this dabchick and one chick were always by themselves. The question arises whether it is usual for only three out of the dabchick’s four eggs to be hatched out. But whether this is possible, or why, if it is, it should be so, I do not know.

INDEX

INDEX

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London

GEORGE ALLEN
PUBLISHER LONDON
RUSKIN HOUSE
156 CHARING CROSS ROAD

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The late F. W. H. Myers explains music in his own way—in forced accordance, that is to say, with his subliminal self hypothesis—without even a reference to Darwin! Did he not know Darwin’s views, or did he think himself justified in ignoring them?