88 Mrs. Johnstone,


On May igth another was laid with the same result, and

between June 30th and July 2nd a clutch of two eggs was laid by

the persevering hen, and on Wednesday, July 24th, one of these

eggs hatched. The probability is that the second egg laid after

June 30th was the one hatched, as previously the hen incubated

the eggs almost exactly three weeks.


The first sign of the advent of the baby was that the cock,

who was sitting at the time, raised himself upright and fed some

small dark object from his crop, placing his beak right into the

beak of the young one and feeding it much as a pigeon feeds

its young. I was able to see the process clearly many times, b\ r

the aid of a hole in the match-boarding dividing the divisions,

and standing in the next division I could examine the nest

without being seen by the old birds.


I need hardly describe the appearance of the baby, as a

minute description was published in a previous number of the

Magazine (December 1904). But after a few days he could

scramble about on the hay platform quite energetically, the

parents brooding him very closely, and not until he was three

weeks old and beginning to grow his wing- and tail-feathers

was he left much to himself.


Long before the body-feathers replaced the brown down

the wing- and tail-feathers were quite developed, and this

absence of body- covering probably caused the death of the

previous young ones.


In the West African tropics this would be no incon-

venience, but in our variable climate proved fatal as regards the

former young ones.


On the 1 8 th of August the young bird flew, that is, he was

discovered perching on a bough on the ground, and looking

ridiculously small and unfledged to be out of his nest at all.


That this state of things was quite normal, I have 110

doubt : he moved easily about the floor, covering the ground

with quick long hops, and generally returned to his bough,,

where he sat humped up and waited for the constant meals with

which his parents provided him.


As seen in the brighter and clearer light he was a dark

rusty blue, almost black, very vulturiue in appearance, with his



