o?i Breeding of the Roulroul or Red-crested Wood-Partridge. 39


perhaps during the breeding season. The female constructs a

curious domed nest, which is very cunningly concealed among

the grasses and brushwood of the aviary. The dome is

considerably flattened with a small and proportionately low

aperture. It is constructed of dry grasses and as in the last

nest, of fronds of dead palm leaves.


Once the female has completed her nest the male keeps as

far as possible from his partner’s abode, and leaves all the sitting

to his mate. She seldom leaves the nest and then only for a

very short time, always closing up the entrance during her

absence.


It is after eighteen days’ incubation that the chicks

emerge from their eggs, and when first born are sweet little

fluffy beings of a dark chocolate colour. Although the head of

one that died a day after its birth shewed indications of a reddish

tinge when under close inspection, the chick, of which an

illustration is given, is the one that survived over three weeks,

and I infer it may have been a female as I could find no indica¬

tion of reddish colour on its head ; this, I should say, is confined

to the male chicks.


Both parents fed the young, food being taken from their

beaks when they had picked up any dainty bit, the while calling

their little ones with a low-tuned chirp.


In the week before the death of the last chick, the female

Roulroul built three more nests, all domed like the one in

which the bird deposited her eggs. Could these have been

constructed as hiding places for her baby? They certainly were

not used for a second clutch of eggs, as the female had not begun

to lay again.


I hope next year I may be more successful. A good

supply of fresh ants’ eggs shall be ready, one or two eggs shall

be reserved for an incubator, aud an attempt to hand-rear them

made in the same way that Mr. Seth-Smith did so successfully

with his Hemipodes.


I11 the three-week-old chick the quill feathers were so well

advanced that I have little doubt, even at this early age, it could

fly well as is the case with the precocious young of many other

Gallinaceous birds. The rectrices were also developed. The



