73



BIRD NOTES.



We heartily congratulate our esteemed Treasurer, Mr. W. H.

St. Quintin, on having reared young of Cabot’s Tragopan. The Tragopans,

or Horned Pheasants, as most of our members are, doubtless, aware, are

some of the most beautiful of the game-birds, and inhabit densely-wooded

regions, at a high altitude, where it is almost impossible to study their

habits in a wild state. Mr. St. Quintin’s experience of some examples in

captivity, as published in a letter to the Field of December 21st last, is

therefore of great interest to aviculturists.



Representatives of three species, namely, the Satyr, or Crimson

Tragopan (Tragopan satyra ), Temminck’s Tragopan ( T. temmincki), and

Cabot’s Tragopan {T. caboti) inhabited a fox-proof enclosure of some five

acres in extent, containing a lawn, shrubbery, and small meadow which was

watered by a stream running through it.


Mr. St. Quintin was much struck by the arboreal habits of all three

species, his specimens, although pinioned, spending most of their time

amongst the branches of the shrubs and trees in the enclosure, descending

only to feed, or dust themselves.


During the year 1900 the female T. caboti laid two eggs, of a buff

colour flecked out with rust} 7 red, and without gloss, in an old Wood-

Pigeons’ nest, about ten feet from the ground, which she slightly lined

with green shoots from the tree ; but as at that time she had no mate, the

eggs were, of course, unfertile. The following year (1901) a fine adult male

was running in the enclosure, but the first clutch of eggs, laid as before in

an old Wood-Pigeons’ nest (this time in a yew some 14 feet from the

ground), proved unfertile, probably from having been touched by frost. A

second clutch, laid in May in the same nest, was transferred to an incubator

and two chicks were hatched, clothed in coarse, shaggy down, of a chesnut

colour, and with the primaries developed to such an extent that on the first

day they could flutter up and perch on the side of the little yard of the

“foster-mother” to which they had been transferred.


The chicks were, with difficulty, induced to feed, at first on green

caterpillars from a maple, and then on small garden worms chopped small,

and ants’ eggs. At the end of a week they ate fresh lettuce in addition

to the other food. They did not take kindly to the “ foster-mother,” and,

until they had learnt to return to the warm compartment, it was necessary

to shut them in at dusk, and let them out for an early feed at 4 o’clock

the next morning. They soon exhibited the same cleverness as the adults

in climbing and perching, and could fly from branch to branch in their

wire run, as neatly as any young passerine birds. Unfortunately one, the

smaller of the two, was killed by a weasel; but the other, a male, was alive

and well on December 3rd, and is so, we trust, at the present time.



The Christmas number of the New Zealand Weekly Press contains

reproductions of some excellent photographs of nests of the Grey Duck,



