129 



Somebody or other has somewhere very truly 

 said that of all birds the Parrots most nearly resemble 

 the human race. Mr. and Mrs. Billy have left their 

 cage and now have an aviary to themselves ; Billy 

 has no feathers on the back of his liead, and is 

 sometimes heard to sing the old songs in a low tone — 

 when his wife is safe in her nest. His eye has if 

 anything a wiser look about it than of yore, and 

 sometimes he "gets a bit of his own back." 



motc5 b\2 a H^pbnD 35rcet)cr, 



By Wir,i,iAM C. Cunningham. 



IS IT possible for birds to know artificial eggs from 

 real ones ? After my experiences with two 

 Greenfinch hens, I would decidedly say "Yes ! " 

 In one case I have a cock Goldfinch mated 

 with a Greenfinch hen, in a cage. When she laid the 

 first iigg, of course I took it out of the nest and put in 

 a china one. The same evening I found the dummy 

 egg in the water vessel. The next evening she laid a 

 second egg, and I replaced it with a china one. At 

 night when I got home I again found it in the drinker. 

 This performance was repeated the next day also, so, 

 thinking that the Goldie was perhaps the culprit, I 

 took him out. However, on the fourth morning the 

 hen laid another egg, and I again replaced it with an 

 artificial one. After doing a few odd things in the 

 room, my eye caught Mrs. Greenfinch standing up 

 in the nest, and deliberately taking the china egg in 

 her beak and carrying it to the seed box. It then 

 occurred to me to try the hen with real eggs, so I 

 immediately put four Canary ones in the nest. She 

 seemed to know the difference, for she settled down 

 nicely, and never once interfered with them. 



In the other case I had a Greenfinch with a Siskin 



