132 FIRST APPEARANCES OF BIRDS, INSECTS, ETC. 



June 25. I went to the nest at 7.30 a.m., at 7.45 one of the 

 birds came to the nest, but was much too nervous to feed the 

 young. At 8 o'clock both birds came to the nesting tree ; 

 after having hung about for some time and after a long 

 consultation, the hen came down the tree backwards and 

 finally got to the nesting hole. She fed the young five times 

 in the following manner. 



She held her head straight up and extended her neck and 

 then retched and opened her beak, and what looked like a 

 cartridge or projectile of chewed-up grey moths came up 

 between her mandibles, and as she shot her head forward 

 into the nesting hole the projectile slid forward toward the 

 mouths of the nestlings. I watched carefully four times out 

 of the five, and each time the food seemed to be chewed-up 

 moths. 



At 8.10 the cock came to the nesting hole, but was too 

 nervous to stay to feed the young birds. 



At 8.25 the young seemed to be getting impatient and 

 hungry, as they kept up the grating bee buzzing noise, 

 beside pecking about inside the nest with quite hard thuds. 



At 9.0 one parent came and fed young by the same process 

 of regurgitation. I was able to distinguish a very limp 

 partially digested looking larva of a lepidopteron. The young 

 came to the nest entrance, and the parent holds the cartridge 

 of food in its mouth and keeps its head on one side so that 

 the beak is in a horizontal plane, then the young one opens 

 its beak in a vertical plane and takes the food from the old 

 bird's beak, the gapes of each bird being within half the 

 length of the beaks apart. 



The gape of the young viridis is pale, about the color of a 

 herring gull's feet. The head is greenish grey, the crest 

 is not red, but darker than the sides of the face, the markings 

 at the side of the face greyish around the eye ; there are 

 indications of dirty grey marks round the throat, which make 

 the young look spotted. 



At 9.35 one of the birds came and pitched up on the tree 

 opposite the nesting tree. 



