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bird which showed liardly any when leaving the nest, considering that 

 young Masked Finches at the same stage are coloured nearly like their 

 parents. 



On the evening of July 3rst, another young bird left the Masked 

 Finches' nest. This is quite differently coloured from the first, as follows : 

 bill horn-brown ; back, sides, throat and breast coloured like the adult 

 Masked Finch, with the black hand by the legs ; under tail coverts and vent 

 look white; rump and upper half of tail feathers white; legs flesh colour. 

 This bird died upon August 2nd. I did not note if the " mask " showed or 

 not. This bird I think must have been a pure bred Masked Finch. 



The Ringed Finches were the real success. After incubating two 

 nests to hatching point and deserting two others at an earlier ueriod, I 

 pulled all the nests out of the tree, bought some more trees and planted 

 them as close together as the}' would go, stopped up all my peep holes and 

 left that part of my aviary quite alone. After about eighteen days, in the 

 middle of August, I heard the sound of young birds being fed on several 

 occasions, but this suddenly seemed to stop. On Sept. 7th, as I was going 

 away for a fortnight on the 9th I went to see how matters stood. What I 

 thought was that the nest was empty. Three young Ringed Finches flew out 

 from a nest behind the empty one. One young bird was rather more for- 

 ward than the other two, which were nearly equal. I was astonished to see 

 them fly halfway round the aviary, avoiding ever\ r obstacle as though they 

 had been out before and knew their way about ; I am of the opinion that 

 this was not their first fly. The two smaller ones more or less fell into a 

 bush ; I was afraid that one of them would be lost and die of cold in the 

 night, but the parents very quickly and quietly got them back again; I 

 could not find them and gave up the search. During the next two days I 

 only saw one bird at a time, but had the satisfaction of seeing one of the 

 younger ones once. I left Bepton hoping on my return to find the three 

 young birds safe. When I returned I was very pleased to find not only 

 three young Ringed Finches but five, they were evidently all from the same 

 nest. The white on the side of the head was still rather dusky, the second 

 baud was nearly complete in one, and quite invisible in another, but when 

 preening its breast the feathers seemed to be black at the base. In the 

 others the baud was thickest in the centre, narrowing off at the sides and 

 finally disappearing. By November they were coloured like their parents. 

 Judging by their bands they are four cocks and one hen, the latter was 

 probably the one on which the band was last to appear. 



During the summer I could always tell the cock from the two hens, 

 he seemed slimmer and had a longer tail. It was the cock alone who built 

 the first nest in some branches in the house, but the hen would have nothing 

 to do with it. The Masked Finches' nest was also begun at any rate by the 

 cock bird. 



Of the Quails P. asialica sat on five eggs during October, but I 



