FOR CAGES AND AVIARIES. 205 



fortnight to three weeks, according to the state of the 

 weather, are able to leave the nest, which they sometimes 

 do before they can quite use their wings, and in the 

 latter case they often perish from the combined effects of 

 exposure and inability to follow the parent birds in their 

 rambles, which they always try to do. 



The first brood, as a rule, consists for the most part 

 of males, and the second of females : the former are of 

 a browner colour on the back than their sisters, but it 

 is difficult to distinguish the sex with absolute certainty 

 until the young birds have moulted their nest feathers. 

 Young Thrushes are not at all difficult to bring up by 

 hand on bread and milk, ants' eggs, and an occasional 

 mealworm, blackbeetle, or other insect. They may be 

 taken when the quills of the .wings and tail are beginning 

 to sprout, and in about a fortnight will be able to feed 

 themselves. It is better to keep them in their own nest 

 as long as possible, and if any dung is accidentally 

 dropped into it, it must be at once removed, or the 

 plumage will suffer, and the appearance of the young 

 birds be more or less marred. They require to be fed 

 every twelve or fifteen minutes, a mouthful or two at a 

 time, from dawn to dusk, so that the task of rearing them 

 is by no means a sinecure, if it is done as it ought to 

 be; but if a thing is worth doing at all, it is certainly 

 worth taking pains with, and a little extra trouble is more 

 than repaid by the improved condition of the birds, which, 

 when treated as advised, grow quickly and are happy and 

 comfortable, as well as tamer and more confiding than 

 they would have been had they been less carefully 

 attended to. 



A pair of hand-reared Thrushes will breed quite 

 freely in an aviary, providing they have accommodation 

 suitable to their requirements ; the female sometimes build- 

 ing in a bush just as she would do in a wild state, but 

 more usually placing her nest on the top of a flat box 

 or cage, or a ledge of the covered-in portion of her 

 abode, which doubtless in her idea is more private than 

 the wired flight outside. An instance occurs to the writer 

 where a hen Thrush made four nests in one season, and 



