BREEDING SWAINSON'S LORIKEETS: Miss Rosa Little 

 writes me that after many failures she has succeeded in rearing 

 a Swainson's Lorikeet. About two years ago there appeared a 

 sliort article from her pen in Bird Notes, describing the parents 

 of the young bird. 



•'The first egg was laid on January 13th, 1907, the second about the 

 " 15th, both were fertile but only one was reared, which is still doing well. 

 "They are now (December 7th, 1907), sitting again and I hope this time 

 " will hatch out two birds. I believe I am the first person who has bred 

 "any of these birds in England for the last 30 years." 



I do not know of any such occurrence since the one re- 

 corded in Notes on Cage Birds {second series), and Miss Rosa 

 Little is certainly to be congratulated on her success. I atu 

 sure it would be most interesting if .she would write fuller 

 details of the event. 



BIRD FEROCITY: Mr. Stuart Dove, of Launceston, Tas- 

 mania, records in current issue of Nature Notes, the journal of 

 the Selborne Society, an instance of bird ferocity, which 

 occurred during a day's tramp in the l)usli which a friend and 



hiuKself enjoyed. 



"Late in the afternoon we were proceeding along a timbered ridge 

 near the South Esk River, when our ears were assailed by the shrieking 

 notes of a bird, which at first we took to be those of a garrulous Honey- 

 eater, but louder and more continuous than usual. As the noise went on 

 we scanned the horizontal limb of a gum-tree under which we were pass- 

 ing, and from which apparently the notes proceeded, but could see 

 nothing. After listening a minute or two the sound seemed to come from 

 near the foot of the tree, and my companion went over to a clump of fern 

 which grew against the butt, and after glancing down called to me. I 

 joined him, and this is what we saw: Two Grey Butcher-birds on the ground 

 amid the bracken, locked in deadly conflict, and quite unable to rise ; one 

 was stretched on his back with the beak partly open, and was calling 

 loudly for mercy; the other was lying upon him with the hooked point of 

 the long, cruel beak driven in just behind the base of his shrieking 

 brother's mandible, his left foot clasping the other's wing joint, while his 

 right foot was clutching the cheek of the lower bird near the point where 

 the beak was driven in. My friend raised them in his hands, and they 

 could offer no resistance so firmly were they interlocked. While thus 

 held I took a short stick and pushed back the point of the beak until the 

 hook was clear of the bone in the head behind which it was driven, thus 

 enabling it to be withdrawn. It was only after several attempts that this 

 clearance was effected, and then the stick had to be employed to unclasp 

 the talons from the wing-joint into which they were driven. .So deadly 



