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on Breeding of the Blue- breasted Waxbill.


about the most innocent of all the innocents. They were so

very innocent that I strongly suspected them, especially when

the mother, flying repeatedly backwards and forwards to and fro

between the aperture and the nearest perch, would persist in

trying to persuade me that she had young in a particular box

which was yards away from the actual spot. And in the end they

diddled me so successfully, these tiny imps, that when the noise

proceeding from a certain place became more and more pro¬

nounced I placed the brood to the credit of a pair of Yellow

Sparrows, and was not undeceived until the actual moment that

I beheld the.baby Cubas flitting about. As for the Blue-breasted

Waxbills, one bird absolutely disappears—two are never seen.

Both sit in turns until the young are hatched : you can never

detect them changing guard ; and then the female keeps mostly

to the nest, and the quiet unassuming male becomes a veritable

Nimrod—a mighty hunter after insects.


The Cuba Finches, in and out of the nest, are noisy little

mites, while the Blue-breasted Waxbills are usually mute; it is

not until they have been flying about for some days that they

begin to find their voices to any effect.


The Cubas seem to feed their young on seed alone ; at

least they have never come to me for insects, nor did they this

year take any interest in those which were supplied for the Wax-

bills. On the other hand, the Waxbills did all that birds could do

to obtain live insects, searching garden and birdroom, following

me about even into the house, and fighting birds treble their

size over the cockroach traps, tackling not only baby cockroaches

but insects as large as earwigs; the so-called live ants’ eggs they

would take, but egg-flake and other insectivorous foods were

ignored. The parents continued to feed their young on insects,

when they could get them, for some time after they had left the

nest—for as long as they fed them at all in fact.


As evening approached, the Cubas hid away their young

in good time in a dark corner some 4 ft. from the ground and

retired to rest elsewhere. All of the Waxbills, young and old,

would swarm together in a heap at a late hour, in a lofty open

place which was fully exposed to the cold and wet. They were

wonderfully tame and confiding ; and one bitter evening I fetched



