Brood (biology)

“ The brood consists of seven or eight eggs of a green colour, sprinkled with brown spots. In three weeks the young are hatched, and are fed by both parents on a great variety of insects, earthworms and snails, the greatest caution being employed to avoid discovery of the nest; and so attached are the parents to their offspring, that we have known a female continue to brood after having received a shot in her body. ”

“ As soon as this has been done the female lays, on the bare ground at the further end of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a single very large, top-shaped, brightly-spotted egg, and begins to brood alternately with the male. ”

“ As a rule, I believe indeed, this advantage of a more numerous brood will not by any means outweigh that of a more perfect brood, but it will do so in those cases in which the chief difficulty of the young animals consists in finding a suitable place for their development, and in which, therefore, it is of importance to disperse the greatest possible number of germs, as in many parasites. ”

“ Five eggs are deposited in due time, when the male having little more to do than to sing his mate to repose, attunes his pipe anew. Every now and then he spies an insect on the ground, the taste of which he is sure will please his beloved one. He drops upon it, takes it in his bill, beats it against the earth, and flies to the nest to feed and receive the warm thanks of his devoted female.
When a fortnight has elapsed, the young brood demand all their care and attention. No cat, no vile snake, no dreaded hawk, is likely to visit their habitation. ”

“ Howard Saunders, in his 'Manual' (p. 518) , says:—"Two, if not three, broods are produced in the season, the young from the first nest assisting their parents in building another, and even in taking care of the second brood." The method of feeding struck me as peculiar. The old bird, on catching an insect, swam up, and presented it to the youngster, who picked it out of his (or her) bill. ”

“ At this moment the brood issue from the ground, leaving innumerable exit holes, and swarm over trees and shrubs, filling the air with their strident calls, and laying their eggs in slits which they cut in the trees. ”

“ Some lay in the fall, others wait till spring. When these eggs hatch, the brood consists wholly of females, which are wingless, and do not lay eggs, but are viviparous and produce from fifteen to twenty young lice in the course of a day. This second generation are also wingless, and at maturity produce their young, and so on to the seventh generation, without the approach of a single male, until the autumn, when a brood of males and females appears, which are both winged at maturity, and then the eggs are laid for the next year's brood, and the parents die. ”

“ Manifestly the impulse to brood could only have developed strength in so far as it fitted in with all the other factors that make for survival; and the principal factor in the external environment seems to be the territory. How could the young have been freed from the risk of exposure if the impulse to brood had not been so strongly implanted in the parent? How could the impulse to brood have been free to develop if a supply of food had not been first insured? How could the supply of food have been insured if numbers of the same species had been allowed to breed in close proximity? ”

“ Yes, to be sure it is, and here are the eggs which the creature carefully covers with her body, and upon which she will sit till the young ones are formed; the small brood, sometimes one hundred and fifty or more in number, then attach themselves to the under surface of the parent, and are carried about wherever she goes. ”

“ With the crow also the female alone broods, and broods throughout the whole period; the male bird supports the female, bringing her food and feeding her. The female of the ring-dove begins to brood in the afternoon and broods through the entire night until breakfast-time of the following day; the male broods during the rest of the time. Partridges build a nest in two compartments; the male broods on the one and the female on the other. After hatching, each of the parent birds rears its brood. But the male, when he first takes his young out of the nest, treads them. ”

“ Where, as is sometimes the case, there are two or three generations or broods of a species during the year, the life of one brood is generally longer than that of the others, because this brood is compelled to overwinter, or hibernate. ”

“ The amount of brood is at first small, and as the new workers emerge they assist in the brood rearing so that the extent of « 27 » the brood can be gradually increased until it reaches its maximum about the beginning of the summer. ”

“ Dry grass, roots, and cow-dung are the materials employed in the construction of the nest. The brood consists of from four to seven small elongate eggs, with a dirty greenish white or yellowish grey shell, occasionally finely spotted with white. The female alone broods, and the young are hatched in a fortnight. ”

“ Whether quick or slow, the creature’s fall leaves the cord, the slough of the primary larva, swinging. When the whole brood has disappeared, the orifice of the cell is thus hung with a cluster of short, fine threads, twisted and rumpled, like dried white of egg. Each opens into a little cup at its free end. ”

“ Where fresh sets are found late in the year, the first have generally been destroyed, and a second brood is uncommon, though the contrary holds true during vole- or lemming-plagues, when food is unusually abundant; at such times, moreover, the number of eggs is abnormally large for the species. ”

“ When there are two broods in a season, the second brood unites with the first, and, if unmolested, they keep together until the spring, under the guidance of the parents. In the mating-season they usually separate into pairs, though occasionally a male will associate with more than a single female, in which case their joint product is united in the same nest. In the spring of 1850 I found one of the nests which contained no less than thirty-two eggs. ”

“ A fertile female overwinters and places her first-laid eggs in the chambers of a simple nest that she constructs herself. When the young of the first brood hatch, she provides them with food, enlarges the nest, and continues the task of egg-laying, while her first offspring relieve her of her former duties as they become able. ”

“ A simple and probable explanation of the phenomenon is this:—When Starlings rear two broods in the year, the second brood would be younger than the first by some two months or so. When the breeding season comes round in the following spring, the second broods are not sufficiently adult to breed, and, not having any duties to call them elsewhere, they naturally continue to resort at night to the old familiar roost. ”

“ In the early twilight, when they are less wild and the mother is not so quick to flutter away and draw you after her, I have sometimes surprised a brood of them,—wee, downy, invisible things, each with a comically long bill and a stripe down his back that seems to divide the little fellow and hide one half of him even after you have discovered the other. ”

“ As shown in Fig. 5, the eggs are carried about attached to a band, which is wrapped about the legs of its parent, but the parent who thus carries the offspring about in the moist grass as it seeks food in the evening is not, as one might expect, the mother, but the father toad.
When the eggs are laid and fertilized, the male takes up his burden and carries it till the young are ready to hatch, when he goes to the water and lets the brood escape into the proper element. What leads him there at the right time remains still to be found out. ”

“ I have never been able to conceive why a bird which produces more than one brood in a season, should abandon its first nest to construct a new one, as is the case with the present species; while other birds, such as the Ospreys, and various species of Swallows, rear many broods in the first nest which they have made, and to which they return, after their long annual migrations, to repair it, and render it fit for the habitation of the young brood. ”

“ When you find a nest like the one in the picture (Fig. 355) , you will see how the comb is fastened to the roof or to a tree or to the under side of a stone.
As soon as the cells are completed, the mother lays an egg in each. From these eggs little grubs or larvæ are hatched. They are fed by the mother until they become pupæ. The cells are sealed over while the wasps are in the pupa state. They have to break open the seals before they can come out.
All members of the first brood are workers. As soon as they are hatched the mother has nothing to do but to provide eggs. ”

“ They seldom abandon their nest, when it has been discovered by men; but, I believe, never go near it again, when a snake or other animal has sucked any of the eggs. If the eggs have been destroyed or carried off, the female soon yelps again for a male; but, in general, she rears only a single brood each season. Several hens sometimes associate together, I believe for their mutual safety, deposit their eggs in the same nest, and rear their broods together. ”

“ All of those having honey had brood and some of them young bees; such had soiled the combs. The one that is alive is strong and has plenty of brood. I thought that bees did not commence to raise brood until a warm spell, but it seems I was mistaken. ”

“ Also we know that among wild birds the male aids much more in the rearing of broods than do the males of our various domestic fowls. The wild male often takes turns with the female in sitting on the incubating eggs, and in some instances the male assumes the entire responsibility of rearing a hatched brood while his mate builds a new nest and lays another set of eggs. ”

“ In the spring, the eggs of last year's crop, which have been laid by the mothers in nooks and crannies out of reach of the frost, are quickened into life by the first return of warm weather, and hatch out their brood of insects. All this brood consists of imperfect females, without a single male among them; and they all fasten at once upon the young buds of their native bush, where they pass a sluggish and uneventful existence in sucking up the juice from the veins on the one hand, and secreting honey-dew upon the other. ”

“ She cannot bear thirst and it makes her do strange things. There may be new broods of young five or six times a year, and if only three or four of each brood live there will be a good many by the year's end. ”

“ It feeds generously on the juices of the snail, and having fed, thinks generously of the coming generations. It was born inside the animalcule; why should it not in turn give birth to children of its own? To found a dynasty, to scatter progeny over the bounteous earth, is a worthy ambition. The mysterious agency of Reproduction begins in this sac-animal; and in a short while a brood of Cercariæ move within it. The sac bursts, and the brood escapes. ”

“ So soon as the first brood is well on the wing, the cock takes charge of it, and the hen proceeds to lay and hatch a second, the male bird and first brood remaining in the close vicinity, and the parents, I doubt not, attending the labor of incubation and attending the young. ”

“ This process continues throughout the summer, generation after generation being produced until the number of descendants from a single individual of the spring-hatched brood may amount to very many thousands. In the autumn winged males appear, union between the sexes takes place and the females lay the fertilized eggs which are destined to carry the species through the cold months of winter. ”

“ Healthy brood in the larva stage—that is, before it is sealed or capped—presents a clear pearly whiteness, but when attacked by foul-brood it rapidly changes to light buff, then to brown, coffee-and-milk colour, and finally to black, at which stage nothing is to be seen in the cell but a flattish scale-like substance when examined closely. ”

“ The results show how ignorant we are of animal life, and how slow we should be to tamper with the arrangements of nature. In Southern cities it produces five or six broods each year with four to six young in each brood. (Notice what it feeds its young.) It fights, competes with and drives away our native useful birds. ”

“ The reproduction of all insects takes place by ova, and they are diæceous—that is, have two distinct sexes. In some few instances, as that of Aphides, or plant-lice, we have the peculiar phenomenon of parthenogenesis, the process of reproduction being performed by imperfect wingless females. These bring forth living young ones, which begin to feed the moment they are born, and constitute a viviparous brood; in other cases females lay eggs, and the process proceeds in the ordinary way, and nearly all the year round. ”

“ The brood consists of from five to six eggs, so extremely various in their colour and markings as to render any attempt at description useless. The young are fed almost exclusively with insects, upon which their parents also subsist in the breeding season, seeds of various kinds affording them nourishment during the winter. ”

“ It is evident that a pair of phœbes must materially reduce the number of insects near a garden or field, as the birds often, if not always, raise two broods a year, and each brood numbers from four to six young. ”

“ In many cases, when the brood is grown and all have left the nest, the whole family keep together. One who has eyes sharp to see will find everywhere little groups of parents with their young. If the old birds rear more than one brood in a summer, the young ones of the first nest keep together. ”

“ Do Robins raise more than one brood in a season? If so, do they use the same nest twice? If they raise two broods, what becomes of the first, while the mother is sitting upon the eggs for the second?
Watch for a Robin leading out a family of chicks. ”

“ The female lays from four to six eggs the first time, four or five the next, and when there is a third brood, which is sometimes the case, seldom more than three, of which I have rarely found more than two hatched. ”