brooded over their eggs until overwhelmed by the surges and drowned. Some
on the tide limit squatted buried to the eyes in sand and seaweed. Of one
the tip of a wing only protruded. It was alive, fostering unbroken eggs.

The metallic starlings have again built on a favourite tree--not massive
and tough, but a slim though tall Moreton Bay ash, the branchlets of
which are not notoriously brittle. They withstand a certain weight,
beyond which they snap. Why do these otherwise highly intelligent birds
so overstrain branches with groups of nests that "regrettable incidents"
cannot be averted? First there came to the ground a group of four, and
then twenty nests, all containing eggs or helpless young. By these and
similar mishaps during the season the colony suffered loss to the extent
of at least a hundred.

"But, like the martlet,
Builds in the weather on the outward wall
Even in the force and road of casualty."

How often, too, do we find nests in places absurdly wrong? Wonderfully
and skilfully constructed nests are attached to supports obviously weak,
and eggs are laid on the ground right in the track of man and less
considerate animals. Some birds seem to lay eggs and rear young solely
that snakes may not lack and suffer hunger, while how large a proportion
of beautiful and innocent creatures are destined to become prey to hawks?

Years ago scientific visitors to a coral islet found almost innumerable
sea birds and eggs. The multitude of birds and their prodigious fecundity
inspired the thought that the "rookery" for the whole breadth of the
Indian Ocean had been discovered. Investigations showed that the islet
was also the abiding-place of a certain species of lizard which subsisted