on Hybrid Passer montanus cV P. lidens. 97


the nest, and on the 5th one youngster was standing in full view.

Half an hour later it was on the ground, but was unable to fly,

and its head and neck seemed to be twisted and paralysed. I

put it back into the nest and found it there dead the next

morning : the back of its head was soft as if the skull had been

broken by a blow, which may have been caused by its fall of nine

feet. There was one other in the nest fully feathered also dead,

the third one I could not find.


In the meantime the other hen had built in a cocoanut

husk, and although she, like the first hen, did not appear to be

sitting, I watched her closely about the time I thought the eggs

would hatch, and on the morning of June 19th I saw her with

insects in her beak.


This nest contaiued one young one and three infertile

eggs. This hybrid progressed very rapidly, and on July 2nd was

out of the nest but unable to fly more than a yard or two : when

I visited the aviary the next morning it was perched on the

hedge.


The Tree-Sparrow now took entire charge of the young

bird, both hens having gone to nest again. For a few days he

fed it almost entirely on spiders, house-flies, etc. On the 6feh

July I noticed both birds at one of the seed hoppers, the old

bird husking the seed and the young hybrid taking it from

the tip of his beak. On the 12th it could husk its own seed.

It was fed by the cock until the 17th, after which it appeared to

be entirely independent, and is now (October) one of the liveliest

birds in the aviary.


About the middle of August I introduced into the aviary

a male Yellow Sparrow. He at once built a huge untidy nest

and tried his hardest to induce one of the hens to join him but,

so far as I could see, without success. One of the hens hatched

four more birds, which left the nest late in September, and the

very pale colour of three of them leads me to suspect that both

their parents are Yellow Sparrows. The fourth is much darker

and I am inclined to think of mixed parentage.


Seeing that both sexes of the young of the Tree-Sparrow

in their nest plumage greatly resemble their parents it would not

be unreasonable to expect that the young hybrids would in some



