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The tliree surviving young left the nest on 2nd July, well

feathered but unable to fly. The noise the two old birds made

that day was astounding, the female mad to entice the young

away from the adjoining aviary and its rapacious occupants

(a Hunting Cissa being especially desirous of " assisting " the

mother), while the male, on the highest perch, whistled defiance

at the world. The more he whistled, the more the neighbours

crowded into the gardens around (it happened to be Sunday) ;

and the more they came the more the bird whistled and sang.


In feeding the young, excepting quite at first, the parents

would not be bothered with carrying ^;;z(3;// creatures to their nest ;

these they swallowed, and carried only the larger ones. If I

persisted in supplying only small mealworms or cockroaches,

ihey would not budge until they had collected several of these

in their bills. The enormous cockroaches which I saw that

female Shama give to her young after they had left their nest

would have convinced me, if I had had need of convincing, of

the needlessness of cutting up mealworms to give to young

birds. The mouth of the young bird while being fed was like

the vortex of a whirlpool. The female would endeavour to tilt

a big cockroach head foremost into the open mouth : if success-

ful, it was caught in the vortex and disappeared in a twinkling ;

but if the insect happened to get crossways or was not caught

fairly in the vortex, it flew off at a tangent, and the performance

had to be gone through again.


I supplied the mealworms, etc., alive and uninjured,

leaving it to the parents to kill them, which they did not always

■do by any means.


One reads that the parent Eagle shoves its young out of

the eyrie on the sides of the precipice, and then darts under the

falling bird for the purpose of supporting it in the air. This is

sometimes regarded as a pretty story and nothing more. Story

or no story as regards the Eagle, I can say that, as regards the

Shama, on the day the young left the nest, I saw the female

•several times, when trying to get them on to perches in a shrub,

ily under them and give them a partial back-up.


Until the young left the nest, the parents kept up the

delusion that I did not know anything about it. They never

went straight to the nest, but every morsel of food was carried

round the best part of three sides of the aviary, almost precisely

hy the same route, a pause usually being made at two points,

and again just below the nest. When the male, who usually

performed the office, carried off the excreta, he flew zig-zag



