BLUEBIRDS. 



25 



as the cock bird kept up an incessant shrieking noise, 

 with his body elongated and his beak turned up to 

 the ceiling for fully half an hour beforehand and for 

 quite ten minutes afterwards. On Sunday, the 15th 

 of the month, the hen spent the whole day in carrying 

 up hay to a large deep box nailed against the wall near 

 the ceiling, and on the surface of this she formed a 

 saucer-shaped depression, in which shortly afterwards 

 she laid three eggs. Whilst sitting she was fed by the 

 cock bird, but whenever he gave her an insect she in- 



slightly damped. I also gave them small earthworms 

 mixed with garden mould in a large saucer, spiders of 

 all sizes in quantity, flies, butterflies, moths, chrysalides, 

 caterpillars, a few mealworms, and beetles. One point 

 in the feeding which I have not geen recorded interested 

 me greatly. It is well known to all breeders of both 

 British and foreign Finches that they always feed one 

 another and their young from the crop ; they never 

 give them food which is not partially digested, so that 

 the young are fed not only on vegetable or insect food, 



BLUEBIRDS OR BLUE ROBINS. 



variably left the nest to eat it. In thirteen days the 

 eggs hatched, and two days later two of the young 

 birds were carried out dead, and dropped upon the floor 

 at some distance from the nest ; the third bird was 

 safely reared, and moulted into his adult plumage 

 towards the end of August. The staple food which I 

 prepared for my Blue Robins, and upon which they 

 partly fed their young one, was a mixture of crumbled 

 stale bread (two parts), Abrahams' insectivorous birds' 

 food (one part), prepared yolk of egg (one part), dried 

 ants' eggs (one pa.rt). and grocers' currants (one part),* 



* Grocers' currants should not be given ; they may possibly nave 

 caused the death of the two young which died in the nest. 



but upon half-digested and softened seeds ; but it was 

 quite a new fact to me that soft-billed birds prepared 

 food for their young. Indeed, I know that our Robin, 

 Blackcap, and in fact our warblers generally, Thrushes 

 of all kinds, Starlings, and Tits, merely crush or break 

 up the worms or insects with which they feed their 

 young. In the case of the Tits this does not appear 

 to be done, or, if <?o, only in the privacy of the nesting 

 hole. My Bluebirds, however, generally crushed the 

 food, and invariably swallowed it, disgorging and 

 swallowing several times before giving it to the young 

 bird. If half a dozen house flies were given they would 

 frequently swallow the whole, and give them to the 



