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Correspondence.



their lieutenants—for the facilities they gave me ; and the thanks

of all the exhibitors of foreign birds are due to Miss Peddie

Waddell for her constant care in looking after the exhibits in

this section, while they were in the keeping of the Scottish

National Cage Bird Society.



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



MANDARIN DUCKS AT LIBERTY.


Sir,—T his last summer, as we had many Mandarin Ducks, we did not

take the eggs but left them to the old birds to rear. The nests were as

usual in holes in trees; many of them a long way from home and high

up in most inaccessible places. All the young got down, or rather got

themselves down, and what I want to draw your attention to is the extra¬

ordinary activity of these little ducks when first hatched.


To begin with, some of these nests were at least two feet down a

perpendicular hole in a tree; the young to have got out must have jumped

up that height. A brood of young ducks covered a mile as the crow flies,

partly through standing corn, the day the}' were hatched, in little over an

hour ! The young ones were able to leap from the water on to a branch

eighteen inches high when a day or two old, and it was very pretty to see

an old duck fly on to a branch and the young leap up one after the other

and range themselves along the branch; one or two would generally jump

on to the old duck’s back. The old ducks did not spend all their time with

their broods, but flew away for hours at a time. When returning, they flew

low through the trees with great rapidity, dodging in and out amongst the

branches like a Woodcock, and calling loudly all the time; the young

would hear her coming and swim out from where she had left them, and

look about to see where she was coming from.


The pair of Pintailed Sandgrouse that I reported as nesting early in

the summer, hatched and reared three young—two <?, one $ , — all of which

are flourishing. The cock parent was hatched here fourteen years ago next

June. K. G. B. Mradk-Wardo.



NESTING OF HOODED PARRAKEETS.


Psepliotus cucullatus.


Sir, — I n November, 1911, my pair of this lovely variety of Golden-

shouldered Panakeets nested in a bird-room, the hen laying three eggs and

sitting well, but they did not hatch, and I removed them from the hollow

log. In December she laid another clutch of three, and again incubated

them steadily, in spite of which they refused to be hatched, and after she



