Notes 07 i the Crystal Palace Bird Show. 167


of the breast are barred with short bars only a shade darker than

the ground colour, lower down some of them become black.

The black band is placed behind the legs and is reduced to a

patch on each side and mixed up with brownish feathers.


The tail is rather thin looking. The two central feathers

are a little longer than the others and the webs are very

narrow for the last I inch, a fact which I did not notice in the

Masked Finch until this year.


Bill very pale yellow ; from the base to the tip of the

upper mandible runs a dark line, almost a ridge. At the sides

near the base of the lower mandible is an orange-yellow

circular patch. Toes and tarsus dark brown. I think this bird

must be a hybrid between the cock Cherry Finch and the odd

hen Masked Finch, as the other two were nesting at the time.

It seems curious that this hybrid should now be coloured so like

a Masked Finch, when on leaving the nest there was hardly a

feather in common between them, especially as a young Masked

Finch is marked almost exactly like its parents. My Cherry

Finches nested, but during my absence the nest was destroyed,

so I have no young Cherries to compare my bird with. Un¬

fortunately the mother of the hybrid disappeared one day.



NOTES ON THE CRYSTAL PALACE BIRD SHOW.


The London and Provincial Ornithological Society held

their fiftieth annual exhibition of Cage-birds at the Crystal

Palace from Friday, February 5th, to Tuesday the 9th, and the

number of entries was said to be the largest ever obtained at one

of these Shows. There were some five hundred specimens of

British birds alone, and the judges must have had a very

difficult task. A fair number of birds in the British Classes were

obviously Continental specimens, such, for instance, as the

Waxwings, Grey Shrikes, Meadow Buntings or Black Redstarts;

but, as there was no special Class for Continental birds, and all

birds included in the British list are, presumably, eligible to

compete in the British Classes, there can be no objection to their

doing so, and their inclusion certainly adds interest to the

Show.



