232 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



families, with three young in each. One pair of Owls nested in a 

 box near this house, the other in a place in the church tower which 

 they have now used with more or less success for nine years 

 following. In the box we have only found remains of the Mistle- 

 Thrush and Starling, but in the tower Eats (six), Field-Mice (three), 

 House-Mouse (one), Thrush, Blackbird, Eobin, Hedge- Sparrow, 

 Swallow, Sparrow, Chaffinch, and Greenfinch. One evening two 

 schoolgirls came to the church to see the Owlets, both being 

 interested in Nature- study, and we found that an unlucky Kestrel had 

 got into the tower. As the upper part is wired in, the question was 

 how to get him out, and the poor bird's efforts to escape were pitiful. 

 We could not bear the idea of his dying of slow starvation, and one 

 of the girls made a plucky effort to catch him by scrambling over an 

 ancient and by no means secure bell-frame, but just failed. Next 

 day I went up and found the Kestrel still there, and in the Owl's 

 nest the remains of a Thrush and a young Eat. These I felt justified 

 in using as food for the Hawk, so I put them in a conspicuous place 

 on a cross-beam, and the next day every trace was gone, also the 

 Kestrel. Probably from his feeding-place he either saw or heard the 

 Owlets, came down to them, and made his escape by the loop-hole. 

 Another day one of the old Owls was in the tower, but seemed quite 

 at home. Perhaps few Owls' nests have had more numerous and 

 more appreciative visitors than ours, and there is every reason to 

 hope and believe that a generation of young Nature-lovers is growing 

 up among us, far more observant and less destructive than some of 

 us were thirty or forty years ago, for whom the field-glass and the 

 camera have taken the place of the gun and the collecting-box. — 

 Julian G. Tuck (Tostock Eectory, Bury St. Edmunds). 



Successful Courtship of Javan Peafowl. — It is such a common 

 observation that hen birds seem unimpressed by the display of their 

 males, that what I observed at the Zoo this spring with the Javan 

 or Burmese Peafowl (Pavo muticus) seems worth recording. The 

 male was in full display when the hen came up and looked at him ; 

 he rustled his train and uttered a peculiar long shrill cry, quite 

 different from his ordinary note (which is like the call of the common 

 Peacock, but much subdued) ; this seemed to show excitement, but 

 the hen walked round behind him and seemed unimpressed. How- 

 ever, she came round in front again, was again greeted with a rustle 

 of the train, and then crouched on the ground. The cock again 

 uttered the peculiar shrill cry, and pairing immediately followed, after 

 which he displayed for some time, while the hen wandered off and 



