f) Bakloli Aviary Notes~\Q)\(). 



account of their connnonncss. Like all chats with which I 

 ha\e had a cag^c acquaintance, it is very easy to catch and 

 not hard to dneat off. They arrive in IJakloh at the beginjiinj^- 

 of March as a rule, in pairs, and start nesting almost at once, 

 having two broods in succession and som-etimcs three, 1 

 believe, as I have found a nest with eggs in mid-August. 

 They build in a hole or crevice in a low bank, generally 

 quite low down, practically on the ground, often at the foot 

 of a bush. The depression is filled up with a cup-shaped 

 nest of moss and grass, lined with anything fine, wool, fibre, 

 or hair. The clutch is three or four and sometimes five; 

 the eggs have reddish speckles on a greenish back-ground. 

 One seldo<m sees more than three (more often only two), 

 fledglings with their parents; few birds seem to rear their 

 full clutch when wild; these birds are especially bad at 

 giving away their nests, when they have young, through over- 

 anxiety. They leave Bakloh early m October, 



The cock has quite a nice song and smgs a great 

 deal in the spring, sometimes from a perch, but more o/ten 

 on the wing during his courting flights, which are very pretty 

 to watch. He uses a slow butterfly flap all the time, the 

 wings nearly ineeting behind the back at each stroke, far more 

 like a butterfly than a bird, and he sings hard from start to 

 finish. He Imounts fairly quickly to, say, thirty to forty feet, 

 fairly straight, taking, say, one circle to get up, then he soars 

 slowly round in a thirty foot circle for ten to fifteen minutes 

 and then slowly descends in diminishing circles to where his 

 lady awaits him. From several little knolls that I know of, 

 one can often see three or four soaring at once, not quite 

 close together of course. If two do gel a bit too close, 

 soaring ceases abruptly, and both drop to the ground to 

 fight ii out. They seem to funk a combat in the air. The 

 fights a)e mostly display, and cease on the arri\al of the 

 hens, to whom they transfer their fury. There are apparently 

 lots of hens, one never sees a solitary cock or iien eitlier for 

 that matter, but an odd hen would more easily escape notice. 



It has a very wide distribution and breeds both i 



m 



