272



Miss E. F. Chawner,



quent intervals all day and every day, the hen doing all the work

and the cock merely looking beautiful, which he certainly did to

perfection.


Then came one of the many cold rainy days of June, when

“ sweeping ” was impossible, so I tried live ants’ eggs and green fly.

I was not surprised that she rejected the former, but it was a blow

that she scorned the green fly, which is usually willingly accepted by

breeding birds. It was too early for wasp grubs and only meal¬

worms were available. I was reluctant to give them, because I do

not think them, even when quite small, digestible for tiny birds, but it

was that or nothing. She took them readily enough, macerating

them in her long beak before giving them to her young. I had every

opportunity of observing her method, because I had to stay on guard

in the aviary or the sugar-birds would have had but little food. A

pair of indigo buntings in the same aviary adore mealworms and

would have emptied the dish while the sugar-bird carried one

beakful, she never took more than one insect at a time and was

deliberate and very gentle in all her movements at the nest. After

each nestling had received the first mouthful she waited and carried

away the droppings before giving any more; sometimes she

swallowed them, but more often dropped them at the further end

of the aviary. Soon the mealworms justified my bad opinion of

them, for the droppings became very constipated and the young

had evident difficulty in passing them. I tried mashing up the

mealworms and cutting them in little pieces, but (Secretarius please

note!) the mother would not feed with them or anything else that

was not really alive. Luckily some smooth green caterpillars turned

up and they quickly put matters rights


The weather improved and, by dint of hard work, I supplied

the little family and warded off the indigo buntings. I would have

turned them into the other aviary, but this contained their deadly

enemy, a remarkably truculent rainbow bunting, who thirsted for the

blood of the cock indigo and was always fighting him through the

wires until both combatants were afflicted with baldness. The

indigos meanwhile started housekeeping on their own account, and

built a massive and very untidy nest, like a house sparrow’s, not far

from the sugar-birds. They play this game every year and then the



