404 THE THRUSH FAMILY 



for although I tried several pairs this year, the hens alone brought 

 food to the nest, the males diligently sought for it and supplied their 

 helpmates, but could not be persuaded to face the camera. Mr. 

 Farren's experiences were the exact opposite of my own, for he tells 

 me that when photographing a pair at their nest, he counted thirty- 

 two visits by the male, and one by the female. Some of these nests 

 might be entered, or escaped from by various doors, and it was only 

 by stopping up their emergency exits that the old birds could be 

 induced to make use of one only. The wheatear's display of anger at 

 this desecration of the domestic hearth was pretty to see. Standing 

 on a clod in the bright sunshine, she rapidly spread out her tail fan- 

 wise and scolded, both before and after feeding the young. Now and 

 again she would return with a brilliant scarlet and black cinnabar 

 moth ; then the striking contrast between the sober browns and greys of 

 the bird and the gorgeous tints of the moth made one of those splashes 

 of colour it takes a lifetime to efface from the memory. 



The food supplied to the young consisted mainly of caterpillars, 

 spiders and moths ; all of which seemed to require a great deal of 

 banging on the hard ground before they were considered suitable for 

 the infantile digestion. The old bird would stand a few feet from the 

 entrance hole, and for the space of half a minute proceed to pound 

 the unhappy insect or larva into a veritable jelly. 



A writer in the Field makes the following statement with 

 regard to a captive wheatear : " Amongst insect-eating birds, I have 

 a caged wheatear that disgorges in pellets the less digestible portions 

 of its food. I send some of the pellets which I picked up in the cage. 

 The bird has been fed during the whole winter on meal-worms and 

 pupse of ants, mixed up with a little grated carrot. He also takes 

 kindly to cockroaches, which he devours greedily." 1 Perhaps the 

 pulping of food supplied to nestling wheatears in some way assists 

 digestion and saves the young birds the trouble of disgorging pellets. 

 I have seen mistle-thrushes pound hairy caterpillars in the same way, 



1 The Field, 1886, vol. Ixvii., p. 400 (Peter Inchbald, Harrogate). 



