236



Ancestral characters in nestlings.



I held this bird in my hand while Mr. Frohawk made a,

careful drawing of the head and breast, and this was produced as

a cut in the letterpress of the book (vol. i, p. 22). Eventually I

liberated this specimen, and later I heard a bird singing a quaint,

medley of the songs of both species in my son’s garden next door.

Of course, a wild hybrid constantly hearing the songs of both of the

parent species would be likely to muddle them up.


The above hybrid should be easy to breed in captivity, and

an examination of undoubted authentic examples would, doubtless,

be more satisfactory. All the typical Thrushes seem easy to

hybridise, since I not only crossed the Grey-winged Ouzel with a

hen Blackbird, two years running, in a garden aviary ; but some

years ago, as noted in ‘ British Birds,’ a Bing-Ouzel paired up with

a Blackbird and nested in a hawthorn hedge in my garden, the

young remaining about the place for some weeks afterwards ; indeed,

I saw them after the autumn moult.


Although the males of both M. merula and M. houlhoul differ

greatly from their females, the hybrids were interesting, the males

being less black than either species, and having a red-brown patch

on the wing similar in character to the whitish-bordered grey

patch on the wing of M. houlhoul ; the females differed a good

deal, one being much paler than the other, and nearly resembling

the ordinary female of ill. houlhoul.


In the case of the young Bing-Ouzel x Blackbird hybrids,

the band across the throat varied somewhat both in form and width ;

in colour it resembled that of M. torquata in both sexes. I was

told that I ought to have taken these birds and kept them, but

I never interfere with nests built in my garden, nor should I think

of doing so with the mere object of convincing sceptics that I could

recognise so well-marked a species as our Bing-Ouzel : its characters

are very well defined, as every British ornithologist is aware.


My conclusion, therefore, is that the plumage of nestlings

generally is much more antiquated than that of their parents ; that

those nestlings which exhibit the dullest and most uniform colouring

are exponents of the most ancient type of plumage ; that those adult

birds which most nearly resemble their young represent an earlier

type of colouring and pattern than those in which the parents have



