Correspondence, Notes, etc .



47



I have a good-sized box cage containing about twenty birds of

various sorts — Waxbills, Canaries, Nonpareils, a Paradise Whydah, a

Budgerigar, a Siskin, and a cock Zebra-finch. The latter has lately assisted

a little pair of Golden-breasted Waxbills during the incubation of their eggs,

and when the young birds were hatched continued to take his turn in sitting

and also in feeding them. I doubted his doing the latter until to-day,

when I saw him doing so more than once, the young birds having left the

nest yesterday. He is as proud of them as their parents, and spends his

time preening their feathers.


In colour the young birds are like their mother. They are, as near as

I can tell, about three weeks old, and are fully fledged and seem strong on

the wing, as one escaped from the cage this morning and flew about the

greenhouse in which the cage stands.


They have been brought up chiefly on spiders, as I gave the parents

several daily, in addition to their ordinary diet of seed and green food, with

an occasional mealworm, I provided them with soaked egg-flake once or

twice, but they did not touch it. The young birds look healthy and strong,

and I hope they will thrive. Do you consider my feeding of the parents

has been correct ?


Lippa de Yarburgh Bateson.


[Cases of unpaired birds feeding the young of other birds are not

rare, but are always interesting and worth recording. The fact of the

young Waxbills being successfully reared proves that there was not much

amiss with the feeding of the parents. —Hd.]



A FINFOOT IN CAPTIVITY.


Sir, —That most enterprising dealer, Mr. J. Hamlyn, has just brought

back with him from West Africa at the time of writing (October 15th) the

most remarkable bird that has been imported for many years. This is the

African Finfoot (Podica senegalensis), a member of a very little known family

numbering only three species, one African, one Asiatic, and one South

American. Their affinities are with the Rails. The present species looks

like a cross between a Cormorant and a Rail, having the bill and wings of

the latter, with the lobed toes of a Coot, and the general form of the

Cormorant, even to the long stiff tail and saw-edged middle claw—a most

remarkable instance of parallelism in development. I11 size it about equals a

Crow, and is greenish-slate in general colour with small white spots and a

white belly; the feet are bright coral red. It is to be regretted that this

extraordinary creature did not survive long, as so very little is known about

the habits of these curious birds that all details are of value.


Mr. Hamlyn states that the bird was fed on raw meat; it was the

survivor of several, and he found the species common at Sette Cama.


Frank Finn.



