304 On Breeding Hybrid Ouzels.


On the twelfth day I saw it fly a distance of twenty feet,

■showing that it was fairly vigorous ; yet the cock did not feed it

so frequently as on previous days, but himself swallowed most of

the worms with which I supplied him.


On the thirteenth day I was able to get close enough to

note the colouring of the young bird:—General plumage mouse

brown, slightly more buff on sides and front of neck, and with a

■distinct buff spot on centre of throat; the throat and breast with

short blackish streaks: bill brownisli-flesh, huffish at tip; the

wax-like swollen margin of the gape narrow and sulphur yellow;

feet clear flesh-pink : a little of the loose nest-down still remained

■on the crown and at centre of back ; the tail still quite short,

barely an inch long.


On the fourteenth day the youngster could fly nearly as

strongly as his parents, but was so shy that it was almost im¬

possible to get a glimpse of it ; the cock only fed it at long

intervals, probably concluding that it was almost old enough to

cater for itself, I was not however able to see that it made any

attempt to do so.


O11 the fifteenth day I was unable to see a trace of the

bird, nor would the cock carry any food to it when I was near,

but made a great show of breaking up worms, flying with them

to a ledge and there swallowing them. Late in the afternoon I

"began to doubt whether the nestling could be alive, and therefore

I went round the aviary, looking under ferns and into corners,

but finding nothing : both parents abused me freely all the time,

so I came out: just then I caught sight of the young bird for a

minute on a branch against a background of dead sticks so like

it in colouring that most persons would have failed to see it: it

was as well concealed as a Red-uuderwing moth at rest on the *

rough lichen-covered bark of a tree, hidden to the eyes of all but

an entomologist or a hungry insectivorous bird.


As it will perhaps take another week or two before the

young bird will be entirely independent of its father, I think it

better to close these notes for the present. After the moult it

may be interesting to briefly describe the bird in adult plumage.



