THE



297



Avicultural Magazine,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF

THE AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



Third Series .— Vol. VII.—No. 11. —All rights reserved. SEPTEMBER, 1916.



NESTING NOTES FROM THE

ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.


By David Seth-Smith, F.Z.S.


(Curator of Birds .)j


The nesting season at the Zoological Gardens has not been

crowned with any great success. The weather has, to say the least

of it, been trying, and in a public Zoological Garden, one finds that it is

not possible to succeed in breeding birds to anything like the same

extent one did when one kept the same species privately in quiet

aviaries. Very few birds have been imported for many months past,

and although the bird population at the Gardens is fairly large, there

is a considerable lack of good breeding pairs.


Amongst the larger birds we hoped to breed Emus this year,

but our pair has quite disapointed us. Last year the hen was away

on loan to a member of this Society who happened to have an odd

male. She laid about twenty eggs, some of which hatched success¬

fully. This year she has been running with a male in one of the

Park Paddocks, but all she did was to drop two eggs in the early part

of the year. I am inclined to think that these birds do not breed

regularly every year, but sometimes rest for a season.


The Rheas have done better, but not so well as they did last

year when nine chicks were successfully reared. This year we have

five very promising youngsters. The hen commenced to lay in May,

and we took the eggs as they were laid, substituting dummy eggs

made of cement and painted yellow. The cock-bird became broody

when four or five eggs had been laid, but we waited until there were

eight before placing them in the nest and removing the dummies,



