172



I reared last year, but am not sure ; I mean to try and find out ; I can

identify it by the left foot, as one of its toes is broken and bent out of

position. I will examine the traces in the mud at the side. I have been

watching the old ones for about an hour, but have been unable to get a

glimpse of the feet. One old bird was on the nest while the other fed on

the bank ; in about a quarter of an hour the latter swam to the nest, which

is placed iu the centre of the roots of an alder growing out of the water about

six feet from the bank. The little ones immediately clambered out of the nest

and waited to be fed ; the old one then disgorged the food, giving its head a

good shake each time, and then fed each one in turn ; after being fed, they

climbed back into the nest and tucked themselves away under the mother.

I am afraid they will not survive long. Crows and rats are too numerous.


In this enclosure are Mandarins, Sheldrakes, Carolinas, Fulvous,

Indian Spotted-bills, Rosybills, Pintails, Magellan Geese, Black Wild

Duck, call Ducks, and others I do not know. The Mandarins, Carolina,

and Black Wild Duck all have nested this year, and are sitting I believe.


The Cuckoo is very much in evidence here. I noticed a pair of

Redstarts yesterday ; and several pairs of Swallows were flying about the

lofts and outhouses.


One of the boatmen at the coast is going to try to obtain some Ring

Plovers’and Oyster Catchers’eggs to-morrow; I hope to rear a few in the

incubators.


I am afraid you will think me somewhat childish, writing like this,

but nothing gives me so much real pleasure as the study of the living

creatures by which we are surrounded. Wai.TKR G. Percivae.


[Mr. Percival knows how to make a good use of the long, and too

often tedious, hours of a slow recovery. The nest of the Long-tailed Tit

is a wondrous and beautiful structure. I was not before aware that the

Moorhen regurgitated its food for the benefit of its newly hatched young.

But, when one comes to think of it, there is no other way in which such a

bird could carry the food to its still feeble and chilly brood. At the earliest

stage that I have ever had an opportunity' of making an observation, the

parent (only one visible) continuously picked up minute—to me invisible,

though not many feet distant — specks of food, which it placed on the

ground just in front of each chick in turn, as they' slowly and silently'

hunted along the edge of the water, the chicks picking up each atom of

food so placed before them, but little or nothing besides. Nevertheless

they appear to feed independently' of their parents at an early' age, but

perhaps not so early as some of us may have supposed. — R. P.]



ADVENTURES OF A CROWNED CRANE.


Sir, —It may interest you, and perhaps some members of our Society,

to hear of the escape of my Crowned Crane last Friday. Iliad intended

taking Mr. St. Quintin’s advice (page 124), and had arranged for Mr. Hart,

owner of the Museum for Birds at Christchurch, to come over and pinion

him on the following Wednesday' ; for we had noticed he had once or twice

in the evenings flown on to the top of a fence over six feet high. At about

7 o’clock on Friday, April 25th, he suddenly flew on to the top of a house,



