Aviculture at the Zoo.



251



Black-winged Dory (Eos cyanogeuys). A very beautiful

species of a subdued red with black wings and sides of the head

violet-blue. It is new to the Zoo, but I have seen one other


specimen of this in England, at Mr. Hamlyn’s.


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By David Skth-Smith.


The month of June, the most important month of the year

for nesting birds, has this year been most disappointing in the

way of weather conditions and extremely trying for the more

■delicate of the foreign birds.


The most suitable aviary for breeding at present in the

gardens is the enclosure between the Monkey House and the Ape

House. This is divided into four compartments and at the present

time, birds are nesting in each of these. In one, a pair of Austra¬

lian Rails (Rallies pectoralis') made a nest in a tuft of grass at the

foot of a small bush, and on June 7th, brought off five chicks,

tiny black mites like young Moorhens. One was found dead the

following morning, but the other four are now half as large as their

parents. They are wonderfully clever at hiding themselves. I

have sometimes seen the mother brooding the four in the open,

have seen the hen leave them and the chicks remain for a

■moment huddled together in a bunch. Presently they all

disappear in a twinkling; each one running in a different

direction, and hiding in the grass, and though one may enter the

aviary and make a careful search it is practically an impossibility

to discover their whereabouts.


A Grey-winged Ouzel is sitting steadily in the same

compartment as the Rails, her Blackbird-like nest built on the

stump of an old mulberry tree.


I11 another compartment is a hen Australian Ouail,

■Coturnix pectoralis , mated to a cock Rain Quail. She has been

sitting her full time of sixteen days, and to-day I noticed two

■empty egg-shells outside her nest though she had not yet left

with her brood.


A cock Varied Hemipode sits within a few yards of the

Quail, his mate taking no further notice of him now that she has

once deposited her eggs and left them to his care ; and, not far from

the Tutnix is a Tatanpa Tinamou, another species in which the



