on Temminck's Whistling Thrush. 201


In Italy Blue Thrushes, Rock Thrushes, Blackbirds, and

Nightingales, etc: are almost invariably fed on these pounded

silkworm cocoons mixed with “ farina,” which is ground maize.

I recall that some mention was made of this insectivorous food,

by Mr. Phillipps I think, in one of the summer numbers of 1902,

as being something new to him ; but I have known of it for

some fifteen years, and cannot imagine why I never introduced

it into England for my birds, and perhaps also for other people’s

too.


I now feed my pair of Hunting Cissas on it, as well as

any other insectivorous birds that I have, and find they like it

well after the first two or three days of introducing it to them.

Given plain and in too great a proportion, it might be over¬

heating, but I haven’t found it so.


The Blue Whistling Thrushes are very fond of fruit, and

when my Italian garden yielded it’s vintage, they would swallow

three or four grapes one after the other, ejecting later on the

pips, but not, as far as I could see, the skins.


They are birds that love their baths very much, and a fine

splashing they make in a fair-sized pie-dish, which is none

too large for them.


[Since writing this, word has been sent me that it is not intended to

reproduce my water-colour painting in colours. This I regret, as though

but an amateur artist, the drawing was sufficiently like the original to

show our members in one moment by a picture, what one cannot do in one

year by a verbal description.


As I believe I possess the only two living specimens of Myiophoneus

temmincki in Europe, and as those two are at this moment in Italy, I fear

I cannot lend them to a professional artist for the purpose of painting

them, whereby the Society is a loser.—H. D. A.]



