Q 



62 



consist exclusively of birds of the second year." At p. 32 he further writes, " the watchful care 

 and tender solicitude evinced by the old birds for their only child is most noticeable. They 

 never suffer the young one to stray from their side ; and while they themselves are rarely more 

 than thirty yards apart, and generally much closer, the young, I think, is invariably somewhere 

 between them. If either bird find a particularly promising rush-tuft, it will call the little one 

 to its side by a faint creaking cry, and watch it eating, every now and then affectionately running 

 its long bill through the young one's feathers. If, as sometimes happens, the young only be 

 shot, the old birds, though rising in the air with many cries, will not leave the place, but for 

 hours after keep circling round and round high out of gun- or even rifle-shot, and for many days 

 afterwards will return apparently disconsolately seeking their lost treasure. 



" Like the Sarus, these birds pair, I think, for life ; at any rate, a pair whose young one was 

 shot last year, and both of whom were subsequently wounded about the legs, so as to make them 

 very recognizable, appeared again this year, accompanied by a young one, and were at once 

 noticed as being our wary friends of the past year by both the native fowlers and myself. I was 

 glad to see they were none the worse for their swollen, crooked, bandy legs ; and this year at 

 least they have got safe home, I hope, with their precious charge. 



"The worst of ornithology is having to kill birds like these. For birds of prey that one 

 shoots so often in the act of tearing some helpless innocent victim to pieces, one has little com- 

 punction ; but with gentle vegetable-eating birds like these, who seem to love each other so 

 well, and so much, and who for so long evince their sense of the loss of any of the family party, 

 the case is different, and no feeling man can kill any of them, I think, without a paug. As for 

 myself, nothing but the rarity of these birds, the paucity of information in regard to them, and 

 their being desiderata in so many important museums, could have induced me to kill so many of 

 them as I have ; and I sincerely hope I shall never need to kill another. I do not know how it 

 is ; but I have often wished that I could be quite sure that the wholesale murder of these and 

 similar innocent animals merely for scientific purposes, and not for food, was quite right. Intel- 

 lectually, I have no doubt on the subject ; but somehow, when a poor victim is painfully gasping 

 out its harmless life before me, my heart seems to tell me a somewhat different tale. 



"Throughout their sojourn here, the young remain as closely attached to their parents as 

 when they first arrived ; but, doubtless, by the time the party return to their northern homes 

 the young are dismissed, with a blessing, to shift for themselves. 



" Long before they leave, the rich buff or sandy colour has begun to give place to the white 

 of the adult plumage, and the faces and foreheads, which (as in the common Crane) are feathered 

 in the young, have begun to grow bare. This, I notice, seems to result from the barbs com- 

 posing the vanes of the tiny feathers falling off and leaving only the naked hair-like shafts. 

 Even when they leave us, however, there is still a good deal of buff about the head, upper back, 

 lesser and median wing-coverts, longer scapulars, and tertials of the young, while the dingy patch 

 along the front of the tarsus is still well marked. 



" Each year several small parties of birds are noticeable unaccompanied by any young ones, 

 and never separating into pairs. These, when they first come, still show a few buff feathers, and 

 have a dingy patch on the tarsus ; and though before they leave us they become almost as purely 

 white and have almost as well-coloured faces and legs as the old ones that are in pairs, they 



