u Gentles. . . Perchance you Wonder ?” 375


paired hen half scalped, and the two Rufous-throated hens continued

nest making and egg laying, aided vigorously in the former process

by the surviving cock, but the eggs were not fertile.


As to the chicks from the other run : six were hatched alive

and, with the exception of one killed by accident, all thrived

amazingly, being fed mainly on gentles as I could not obtain fresh

ants’ eggs. For the first few days the gentles were scalded in boiling

water and the birds fed by hand, and afterwards living gentles, well

cleaned in dry sand, given. Custard was also given in the early

stages. The birds refused Spratts’ Partridge Meal, and although

confined in a small area on stale ground, I never knew birds thrive

better. The incubation period for these birds is twenty-four days.


I have also mainly used gentles this year for rearing young

Crested Tinamous and found the result very satisfactory. It may be

argued that these birds are easy to rear, or that the season has

been favourable, or both ; but I have not lost a single young bird

from disease, and at early stages the birds took more readily to

gentles than to artificial food, and grew very rapidly. The difficulty

I have had with my young Crested Tinamous—which were from

time to time hatched in an incubator and afterwards placed under a

hen to rear—was to get them to answer the call of the hen. They

seemed (unlike the partridges) to have no conception of this, and

would neither come readily to be brooded or fed for at least a week

after hatching'. In one case, the hen, possibly being cosmocentric in

her views, got so disgusted at the young birds’ conduct, that she

started to kill them all after a few days time ; luckily another hen

of more benign nature was at hand, and all ended well.


The habit of Crested Tinamous is to lay eggs on every high

hill and under every green tree in their neighbourhood, and as the

eggs are grass green and often partly covered they are difficult to

find. During the first week of July, the cock Tinamou collected

three eggs into a small depression under a little Scotch fir, made

several experimental trials in sitting for half-an-hour a day before

he ultimately commenced to sit steadily, and, as the reporters say of

the House of Commons, “ was left sitting at the time of our going to

press.”


The incubation period for Crested Tinamous is 21 or 22 days.



