The architecture of birds / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The architecture of birds / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    down plucked from her own breast, and by no means sparingly, but, as Brunnich informs us, heaping it ‘up, so asto forma thick puffed roll quite round the nest. When she is compelled to go in quest of food, after beginning to sit, she carefully turns this marginal roll of down over the eggs to keep them warm till her return. Martens says she mixes the down with moss,* but as this is not recorded by any other observer, we think it is not a little doubtful, particularly as in the places chosen for nestling she would find it no easy matter to procure moss. It is worthy of remark, that though the eider-duck lays only five or six eggs, ‘ it is not uncommon to Snd more than even ten and upwards in the same nest occupied by two females which live together in perfect concord’ —a circumstance, however, of which we shall meet with other instances as we proceed. The quantity of down in each nest is said, by Van Troil, to be about half a pound, which, by cleaning, is reduced one half. By Pennant, who examined the eider’s nests in the Farn islands, off Northumber- land, it is only estimated, when cleaned, at three- quarters of an ounce, and this was so elastic as to fill the crown of the largest hat.[ The difference of quantity in these two aceounts, theoretically ascribed by the translators of Buffon to difference of climate, may have arisen from the one being the first, and the other the second or third nest of the mother duck : for if the first nest be plundered of its down, though she immediately builds a second, she cannot furnish it with the same quantity as before ; and, if forced to build a third time, having then stripped her breast of all she could spare, the male is said to fur- nish what is wanting, which is recognised as being * Recueil des Voyages du Nord, ii, 93. t Van Troil’s Letters on Iceland: $ Pennant, Tour in Seotland, 8vo, edit. p. 36.
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