92



Mr. R. Philupps,



to the new nest faced in a different direction, so that the occupiers

would not come into collision when approaching or departing

from their respective habitations.


The first of these two nests looked towards the aviary

door, and from time to time I would turn the binocular upon it.

When the male was in the nest, his red face was conspicuous, but

when it was the female that was at home I had to approach

nearer and had difficulty in making her out, for the sexual

difference in plumage between the two birds was marked.


On the 2ist, the nest looked dilapidated and deserted, so

again I approached it, and found that the roof had been torn to

rags, although the solid and substantial structure itself was

practically uninjured ; whether the wreck had been caused by the

rather high winds of the two preceding days or by a big battle I

do not know, but on the following day I found a female that had

been injured. The inside of the nest, viewed from above, seemed

very large, and was not too scrupulously clean. Quite lost in the

cavity was a little brown figure, braced tightly up, aud crouching

in just the same manner as the young Blue-breasted Waxbills I

wrote about last year (p. 346). It was quite fully feathered. It

had left the nest by the following morning, when I noticed it

squatting with its parents on a sunny bank.


Not a day passed but I hunted up the fledgeling with my

binocular. It was quite at home on the wing, and seemed well,

but it felt the cold terribly ; it worshipped the sun, and followed

its rays about from place to place—when there were any to follow.

Early in October it disappeared, and I did not immediately find

the body—I did not want to disturb the second nest in the thuja,

aud a Quail-Finch was sitting close by; however, on the 7th, I

extended my search to the tree, and found the body just below

the nest in which it had been hatched. The feathers on the

under parts and about the head were ruined ; but from my notes

taken before its death, supplemented by what I could make out

from the remnants of the plumage, I may give the following as

a tentative description of the fledgeling Painted Finch :—


General aspect above brown, tinged with what in the dis¬

tance had seemed to be chocolate, but which had appeared pink

when seen in the nest and now also on the dead body; the



