on some notes on the Black-faced Ibis. 147


They were built on poles that for some purpose or other had

been put on the margin of one of the lakes, and I was told that this

was a very favourite nesting site.


In Punta Arenas, on the Straits of Magellan, I saw a tame

bird of this species which was kept by a professional gardener in his

yard, who told me that he had reared it from the nest and was

keeping it for a monk in that same town, who wanted to stuff it

when it had acquired its full plumage, to put it into his museum.


As I chanced at the time to have one bird of this species alive

at home at Gooilust, I had an interview with the monk in question

and asked him to sell me the bird and not to stuff it! After some

talking, he kindly yielded to my petition, and I had it sent home to

me. It is this bird that bred with my other one last summer, as

fortunately my old bird was a female, and the newcomer a male.


I keep my pair in a large flight aviary with some water in it

and some bushes, and on one of those my birds built a nest of sticks

in which they laid eggs, which they incubated in turn.


After some weeks a young bird was hatched, but it grew very

slowly, and after a couple of weeks was found dead on the ground.

It was about the size of a plucked Pigeon, and almost as naked.


Not long after this the birds laid again, but eggs or young

ones completely disappeared.


This made me rather impatient, and I resolved to interfere if

the birds should lay again.


I was in luck; two eggs were laid in the same nest, and these

I took away and put under a bantam hen.


After an incubation of about twenty-eight days one of the

eggs hatched, the second one being clear.


We left the baby one day under the hen and then my bird-

keeper took charge of it, putting it into a basket with woollen

blankets and a hot-water bottle.


We fed the bird with mashed raw meat and bread and milk,

and when it grew bigger also with small fish.


The little creature was nearly naked when it hatched, with

only a very few bits of down. It had a short bill and little flesh-

coloured legs.


The black throat lappet of the adults was present from the first.


H§



