a Pair of Tame Ground-IIornhills. 89 



dry leaves are knocked hither and thither by sidelong blows 

 o£ the bill. I saw a large insect taken from amongst the 

 gnava leaves in this way only to-day — or picked up and 

 turned over ; and the birds dig at the slightest excuse — to 

 enlarge a small hole or to explore a piece of loose earth, 

 and so on. I have often watched them extract edible objects 

 from holes made in this way.^' I might well have added 

 that the surface indications that show them where to dig 

 have often been to me quite invisible. 1 remember that Pat 

 once entered the storeroom when I was there, looked hard at 

 the floor and began to dig. " You're really rather an idiot," 

 I thought, but sure enough he brought up a Sphingid larva. 

 I have frequently seen the same sort of thing happen out of 

 doors, and i-egard it as another indication of their great 

 sharpness. They sometimes dig at the roots of plants, such 

 as mealies and beans. They are " death " on cutworms, and 

 most usefid to us in the kitchen-garden on that account^ 

 although, when they indulge, as they sometimes do, in 

 wdiolesale and repeated pulling-up of freshly-transplanted 

 onions, cabbages, &c., my wife is inclined to disagree with 

 my view that their usefulness more than outweighs the 

 inconvenience caused by their little occasional vagaries ! 

 They are capable, however, of pulling up larger things than 

 small cabbage-plants, and I have seen Pat tackle (but without 

 success) quite a good-sized shrub-stump that was rather loose 

 in the ground — possibly through his having dug round it 

 already. He held it in his bill and moved round and round 

 it, leaping into the air with every pull. But before leaving 

 the cutworms I may as well quote from a note describing an 

 involuntary confession by Biddy of what she once found in 

 the garden : — 



''Juhj 15th, 1911.— This afternoon Biddy ejected a 

 quantity of undigested food. Some of it looked like lumps 

 of uncooked swe(!t potato, and it was probably this (whatever 

 it was) that had disagreed with her, for both she and Pat 

 at once set to work to pick out the numerous cutworms and 

 the weevils and grasshoj'pers that were mingled with it, but 

 severely left the [)otato-like fragments alone. I examined a 



