Notes on the Pckiu Robin. 
row. Since then all has gone well, and ihouyh not yet inde- 
pendent promise soon to be so. I notod the followin,^, to inr, 
very interesting points: — 
Four nests were constructed during ilic season iuid all <il tluMn, 
together with two others I saw in the summer aviaries at llic London 
Zoo, were all facsimiles of the one illustrating these notes. 
The parent birds were very secretive, both in leaving and return- 
ing to the nest, and equally so when feeding the young after ilu-y had 
left the nest. It watched they often mike a circuit of the a\iiry and enter 
the foliage a long way from where their cries told you the young were - 
invariably they crept through the thickest cover the aviary provided to 
reach the nest or young 
The incubation period is, 1 thmk, twelve days — I was only a'lle to 
check this three times and the result was 12, 12 and 13 days, respect- 
ively, l)ut, as there were three eggs in the last clutch and I noted the 
date when there were but two, also, as one young birvl appeared a day 
later than the first two, we may fairly accurately assume the period to be 
twelve days. 
Both parents shared in the tasks of nest construction, incubation, 
and feeding the young, though the hen bird is the most assiduous in the 
latter duty. 
So far as I was able to observe the young were fed entirely on 
insects while in the nest, the parent birds first killing the insect and 
then carrying them in their bills to their young (very few mealworms 
were given owing to their scarcity, but wasp's grubs, and gentles were 
freely supplied). 
The young left the nest on the twelfth day. 
The callow young appear almost bl.ii k, suffused with pink : fairly 
well covered with long black down : the interior of the mouth is very 
brilliant, first orange then deep pink, and looks very striking and brilliant 
when they are gaping for food. 
The nestling plumage of the young when they left 
the nest was grey, lighter on the under parts ; the crown of 
the head tinged with olive green, also the the upper back, 
but less noticeably so ; there are light huffish patches above 
and below the eye and on the throat ; the flights arc black- 
ish, with very narrow red outer margins and tipped with buff ; 
tail feathers barely indicated when they left the nest; the 
abidioimen is buff; the bill is dark horn-colour; with each 
mandible tipped and edged with yellowish horn; legs pale 
brownish flesh-colour. 
One could easily yarn on ad infiiiidim about such 
an interesting species, but space in our Journal is too pre- 
cious to permit of such itidulgence, therefore 1 will only add 
that the Pekins have access to milk-sop, fruit, msectile mixture, 
