12 



breeding from her, if she can only obtain a male, 

 and her hopes, I trust, will be fulfilled, as certainly a 

 new-laid Touraco egg should have a nobler destiny 

 than to provide a titbit for a Jay, even though a 

 Pileated one. 



Next we come to a pair of rare Parrots, the Black- 

 headed Caiques, which have an aviary to themselves, 

 and will probably soon add more lustre to the already 

 long list of rare birds bred at the Quinta. 



After an aviary of Weavers, and another for 

 Cardinals and other birds of similar size, we come to 

 a third, full of Peach-faced Lovebirds, which breed as 

 freely here as Budgerigars do at home, though it is 

 quite the opposite with the Red-faced, none of which 

 have ever bred even here. 



We then enter the largest of the enclosures, 



which is divided into several portions and furnished 



with green branches and growing plants which are 



renewed when necessary, and among which the birds 



show to the best advantage. Here are located the 



small foreign seedeaters, to me the most interesting 



part of the collection, and among them were some 



rarities indeed ! First, the orange and black Hooded 



Siskin of South America, a lovely bird, of which a 



rough idea may be formed by imagining a common 



Siskin, in which all the green is replaced by brilliant 



red or orange. With him were some lovely mules 



bred between him and a hen common Canary, 



whose plumage distinctly followed the father, the red 



predominating, while the black was represented by 



greyish tinged with green. More interesting still was 



a hybrid of the second generation, that is a cross 



between one of these Hooded Siskin - Canary mules 



and a hen Canary, a grey-brown bird with only a pale 



tawny orange patch on its breast. Other uncommon 



birds were a pair of Yellow-rumped Singing Finches 



