32



On the Nesting of the Wminchat.



thing, it does not know in a strange locality where to find food, and

it has become rusty in the art of catching insects. I notice that

when these starving birds return to the aviary for food, as they often

will, their owners .sometimes write enthusiastic letters to the weekly

press, announcing that they can prove that birds prefer captivity to

freedom ! However, given fine summer weather and liberal feeding

(supplementary to what they can find), they soon become self-support¬

ing. For several days my Whinchats required a lot of assistance,

especially the youngsters, who seemed to forage for nothing but ants

(on which they had been partly reared). With a whistle and a swing

of the bait-can I could call them up at any time ; in fact, a Bank

Holiday tripper, one of the many readers of a certain weekly paper,

who paid me a visit on the 5th, found me sitting in the garden with

the whole family taking lunch under my chair. On the following

day they disappeared, and, though it seemed odd that they should all

go on the same day, still, as they looked quite prosperous when last

seen, I think it probable that all went well and that in due course

they flitted away southward over the dim blue hills on their long

journey to the corn-fields of the Gambia. Quocl felix fciustumque sit.



P.S.—The young male did very well in a cage. He underwent an

extensive moult, especially of the breast and neck feathers,

and yet he sang throughout the moult. On the 23rd August

I watched him pulling several breast feathers out with his

beak. After the moult, the crown was darker, the breast

brighter and had lost almost all the dark spots ; the median

tail coverts, above alluded to, were replaced by others rather

shorter with pointed tips ; a small white patch appeared near

the angle of the wing, almost entirely concealed by the lesser

coverts.



