Breeding Notes for 1912.



55



good deal of interest in the chicks, offering them food and showing

anxiety when we entered the aviary. But the young always stuck

close to their father and I never saw them brooded by the female.

The chicks were luckily kept by the male most of the time under the

light of a large garden frame which was fixed near the ground in a

sloping position, supported on loose bricks. I recommend this as

a good way of keeping a piece of ground dry for such birds, even in

wet weather, without obstructing light.


Tour American Blue-birds were partly reared (all males), but

after they had left the nest, and had just begun to feed themselves,

they and the mother became affected with “gapes,” and the young

died.


My Australian Cranes laid eggs (two clutches), but the female

is, I think, scarcely adult, and never showed the slightest interest in

them ; and the male, on each occasion, after sitting steadily for about

two days, apparently concluded that to incubate for so many weeks,

in such a summer, was not to be undertaken single-handed, and,

losing patience, he broke and sucked the beautiful eggs.


Of the nine young Cabot’s Tragopans half-reared, only one

remains. They were treated exactly in the way that usually answers

perfectly. But the incessant damp and chilly weather was too much

for them, and one after another they drooped and died. And the

same with some chicks of Sonnerat’s Jungle-fowl, we lost the first

brood. But in July the hen went to nest again, and though so late in

the season, by rearing entirely in a dry shed upon peat moss, and

supplying insect food by hand, we have managed to get two fine young

birds up. A young Impeyan, being reared by the parents, also died

one excessively wet night, when the size of a partridge. As with our

Game-birds in a bad season, the time when the young have grown

too large to be easily brooded by the parents, is very critical. They

miss the protection of the plumage of the mother bird, their own

feathers being soft and their covering not complete, and they cannot

stand much exposure.


But my great disappointment remains to be told. I have

more than once had young of the Little Bustard hatched, but the

chicks have never lived more than a few days, chiefly owing to the

nervousness and excitability of the mother, whose one idea was to



