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Mr. C. Barnby Smith,



male performs the duties of incubation and nursing. Here the

cock is sitting on five or six beautiful pink eggs.


A common Partridge has just brought off a brood of no

less than nineteen chicks from twenty eggs, an extraordinary

clutch indeed, and all laid by the one bird.


A pair of Malabar Mynahs are sitting in a nest in a box in

one of these aviaries.


The new flight cages to the Bird House are more suitable

for exhibiting birds than for their nesting, but we hope some may

succeed in rearing broods here. At present two young Black

Tanagers have been hatched in a nest in a small box tree in one

of these flights, and one so far appears to be doing well.


Several pairs of birds from the Bird House have been

transferred to the Pheasantries for breeding, and two pairs of St.

Helena Seed-Eaters have young.


A full-winged Wigeon made her nest in the middle of a

flower bed near the Three-island pond and hatched off eight

ducklings on June 6th ; three of these vanished, probably as the

result of the visits from Carrion Crows, but the other five are

doing well.


Amongst recent additions to our stock may be mentioned

a fine Cape Ground Hornbill (Bucorax cafer) and a pair of

Mexican Tiuamous (Tinamus robustus).



NOTES ON WILLOW-GROUSE.


Lagopus la go pus.


By C. Barnby Smith.


It has long been one of my small ambitions to keep grouse,

and on March ist of this year there arrived for me three Swedish

Dal-ryper, or Willow-Grouse, sent from Copenhagen by Captain

George Lindesay. I had ordered a cock and two hens, intending

to try and mate one of the hens with a cock Rock-Ptarmigan.

All three birds arrived in excellent condition, but as they were in

absolutely snow-white winter plumage it was quite impossible to

distinguish a cock bird from a hen.


I at once turned the birds out into a grass run and fed them

on oats, wheat, dari and hemp seed ; and, of course, supplied fresh



