Hawks for days after they left the nest — were quite tame and 

 allowed me to handle them. They were of a modest brown 

 colour, beaks black, and just a shade of crimson visible in their 

 tails and primary wing feathers ; but what struck me more than 

 anything else was that on the very day they emerged from the 

 nest they showed that " twitch" of the tail which is so con- 

 spicuous in this species. The birds came out on the 18th and 

 19th of October, and the weather beginning to turn cold, and 

 the little mites looking very humped up, I caught the four and 

 their parents, put them into a " Crystal Palace " cage, lighted up 

 my greenhouse boiler, and ran the temperature up to 65 and 

 kept it as near that as possible for three or four days. 



I have spent some time with them to-day (Oct. 27th) and 

 find the young birds are beginning to feed themselves. I there- 

 fore hope my anxieties are at an end and that I may congratulate 

 myself on having reared four Neochmia phaeton. The number of 

 eggs laid was four, so I am again fortunate in getting a bird from 

 each egg. I have now, on the kindly advice of our Editor, 

 caged the young and old birds separately. 



The Diamond Doves have not bred. There were evidently 

 more hens than cocks, and I am unable even to say what number 

 of eggs each bird laid. Date in the season I exchanged a hen for 

 a cock with one of our members — but, after the early part of 

 August the hens ceased to lay. They are pretty, gentle little 

 birds, and, not even the Crimson Finch cock (the champion 

 bully of the establishment) has an unkind word to say to them! 



The Budgerigars have bred freely, but I don't seem quite 

 to have hit off the best way of treating them. My yellows died, 

 one pair of greens have not bred, but the other two pairs have 

 produced a round dozen of youngsters and there is a husk con- 

 taining three young birds who have still to face the world, and a 

 precious cold world they will find it too, if this weather 

 continues. 



A little earlier, in these notes, I mentioned the feud 

 between the Crimson and Zebra Finch cocks. It seems hardly 

 credible, and yet it is undoubtedly true, that the cock Zebra which 

 had been on quite friendly terms with the young Dong-tails and 

 Rufous-tails, deliberately " went for " one of the young Crimson 



