Happenings in Our Aviaries. 215 



brought out two more young — the young cock from the first 

 nest, unhke his father, is now showing the white dots on his 

 sides as he is coming into adult plumage. These parents also 

 are now sitting again — of which more anon. 



GouLDiAN FiNCHKS (FocpliHa gouldiac). Of these, one 

 nest did not materialise beyond the state wlien I last wrote — the 

 other hatched out five chicks and brought four of them up to 

 independence; the four were of very different ages, or rather 

 degrees of development, when they left the nest. One of them, 

 though not the smallest, seemed a very backward youngster — 

 we lost it a day or so ago, so we sent it and the young Rufous- 

 tail to the Natural flistory Museum, South Kensington, where 

 it seems they had no skins of innnature young of either of these 

 species. 



Both pairs then went to nest again, but this time there 

 was a good deal of quarrelling while choosing nests, the 

 result being four out of five infertile eggs in one nest, and three 

 out of five in the other. The one pair left their single baby 

 to unkind fate from the start. The other pair fed well for over 

 a week and then, or possibly on account of the cold weather, 

 they too stopped feeding, so that on Saturday last we found one 

 young one dead, and the other with empty crop and rather cold. 

 Seeing the parents would have nought to do with it we put it 

 by way of experiment into the firefinch's nest (as I mentioned 

 above, they are sitting) and, to our surprise, they took to it and 

 seem fearfully proud of it. I don't for a moment suppose we 

 shall rear it, but it is still going on well after four days' care 

 b; the Firefinches, who promptly drove away the parent 

 Gouldians when the young one began to call for food. It is 

 rather amusing — the Gouldians always feed their young mainly 

 on canary seed; the Firefinches give none, but feed on Indian 

 millet and insects — still the young one seems to be doing very 

 well on it; also young Gouldians simply yell for their food, 

 whereas young Firefinches are almost silent. The Firefinches 

 seem to think this yelling on the young Gouldian's part 

 unseemly and somewhat of a reflection on their care of it, so at 

 the first sign of a yell they cram him with food to keep quiet ! 

 Beyond the above we have Red Avadavats (Sporaeginthus 

 ainandava) sitting, but too late one fears. The nest is a very 

 neat globular grass structure about .six inches off the ground. 



