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tliey were not quite so rare as was supposed. Mr. Branch sent

home some dozen skins to Mr. Rothschild. But there seems to

be no means of getting nestlings, therefore the chances of getting

live birds is always doubtful.


It is curious that Guilding’s Amazon does not seem to be

a good talker, while a Versicolor which Lady Thompson got, and

which also must have been caught old, grew tame and talked soon

after she acquired it. I found my august a rather noisy, like most

Amazons, but the drawback to them as cage birds is their great

size. They want a cage as large as a Macaw’s.



THE EUROPEAN BEE-EATER.


Merops apiastcr.


By Reginald Phillipps.


(Continued from page 132).


What happened during the very bad fogs of the winter

I will not venture to describe. It was only with the greatest

difficulty that I could keep their fragile little bodies and

souls together. Indeed, they continuously oppress me with

the feeling that they may slip through my fingers any day.

Some of our members will ask why I did not feed them a little

by hand during the short winter days. I found that, Cuckoo-like,

if fed on their perches, they would sit side by side clamouring

for food, waiting for me to feed them, but would not come down

to feed themselves ; so that, except when compelled to act other¬

wise, it was the greater kindness to leave them alone. But times

without number I was compelled to hand-feed them, usually by

handing the food to them in a white china dish which shewed up

the colour of the cockroaches, but sometimes to the extent of

placing them 011 the carpet in the lightest spot, and even carry¬

ing them in my hand right to the window and holding the food

to the tips of their bills ; or doing the same with one hand while I

held a lamp to their faces with the other. I may just mention

that opening the doors of their cage at one time was dangerous

work, as they dashed off against the window, or, at the best, after

a rapid flight round the room, like Mrs. Leslie Williams’

Parrakeet (Vol. VII., p. 227), would quickly alight “without

discrimination and equally without dignity”—on the floor or

anywhere else as luck might have it.


The second difficulty was that I found their eyes were so

focussed that, when pecking at their food, the point of the bill



