230



Miss Rosie Alderson,



Diamond Sparrow or the Yellow-rumped Finches, which are

■quite aware of the comfort of their wooden house on cold or

stormy days. The Harlequin Quails too spend a good deal of

time there.


The most charming of my Quails, the tiny Chinese Painted

variety, refused to take refuge inside and looked so miserable

that they were caught up, and have spent the winter with the

Waxbills in the conservatory, perfectly tame and confiding and

seemingly quite happy. The little hen has already laid forty

eggs this spring, but does not attempt to sit on them. We hope

that when she goes into the garden again she may find a nesting

site to her liking and manage to bring off a brood.


L. Williams.



NOTES ON MY BIRDS.


By Rosie Alderson.


( i Continued f>om page 149).


Since I last wrote in the March Magazine I have had a

letter from the gentleman in Jamaica who sent me my Black-

bearded Doves. It seems I made a mistake about their habitat,

which I hasten to correct. Though they were sent to me from

Jamaica they are really natives of Cuba. Quoting from their

former owner’s letter he says:—“ The Black-bearded Doves came

to me from Cuba, hence they are hardly common in Jamaica.

In Cuba they are styled ‘ Spanish Partridge.’ They laid with me

on the bottom of a box hung about four feet from the ground,

and employed no nesting material. More than one egg was

‘toe-bored,’ and the one young bird I had died quite early,

it appeared to need its parents some time after it was fully

feathered.”


This is just what my own birds seem to be doing. They

had never nested with me before, but to-day, May 13th, the hen

laid an egg in a Parrot’s nesting box some four feet from the

ground. These boxes were made for me by a joiner specially

for the Parrots. The bottom of the box is hollowed out saucer-

shape and one side of the box hinges downwards like a door.

This I have fastened firmly half-way down so that it now acts



