ii6 St. Quintin : Some Avicultv.ral Notes. 



with a stream flowing through it ; and though they readily ate 

 ants' eggs and iinely chopped meat, they caught a great amount 

 of natural food off the water and from the grass overhanging the 

 margin. This largely consisted of gnats and other winged 

 insects. Sometimes one would be seen to swim to the shallow 

 end of the pond and to spin round for several minutes together, 

 joined perhaps by one or both of the others, paddling furiously 

 with his lobed feet and pecking at the particles, some evidently 

 edible, which rose from the bottom in the currents thus pro- 

 duced. It was evidently a deliberate action, and is probably 

 regularly practised in the wild state, but I have never seen it 

 recorded. 



Flamingoes can be seen to shuffle their feet rapidty, 

 stepping backwards all the time, and searching with their 

 reversed bills for food uncovered, probably molluscs and the 

 fine roots of water plants. Plover, Gulls and Thrushes adopt 

 other means of setting worms in motion, so as to expose their 

 whereabouts.* 



Brush Turkeys. I don't think any of my birds created 

 more surprise and interest than some Brush Tiirkeys, which I once 

 kept. They were of the common species, Catheturus lathami. 

 I found them fairly tolerant of our climate, but I used to keep 

 them in a dry shed till mid- April. As soon as they were let out, 

 the male would begin to make his mound, raking together all 

 the loose soil, leaves and grass, for a radius of some twenty 

 yards from the selected spot, which was always out of the sun, 

 under the protection of an overhanging tree. The bird turns 

 his back to the place where the heap is to be, and grasps with 

 his particularly large foot as much of the material as he can 

 manage, and flings it backwards. Once I happened to be about 

 when the cock bird was laying his ' foundation stone,' so to 

 speak. He had excavated a short trench about two and a half 

 feet by one foot. Presently the mound was raised above this 

 trench. I never satisfied myself as to the object of this trench, 

 nor do I know if there is always one underneath a mound. 

 Certainly it was not for the reception of the eggs, for they were 

 never laid less than two feet above the ground level, though as 

 the mound consolidated, they sank with it. 



{To be continued). 



* If anybody doubts that Earthworms can be heard, let him put a 

 few healthy worms in a flower-pot of loose earth, and hold it to his ear, 

 when they can be distinctly heard moving about. 



