Birds In and About the Station 357 
chielly on the ground on insects, though in captivity it partakes 
(like most insectivorous birds) ot a certain amount of fruit, 
berries, and bread and milk. They do not court observation, 
a casual observer might easily miss them, yet they are by no 
means shy, and if one penetrates their haunts and keeps still, 
they will approach quite close to make investigations, and 
having satisfied their curiosity (which is great), they will carry 
on their usual business quite at ease, vanishing into the 
nearest cover at any abrupt movement. TheLr curiosity, com- 
bined perhaps with greed, causes them to fall easy victims to 
the trapper. 
In the aviary, though they could hide in a marvellous 
way, one or more was always in evidence and attracted much 
attention from visitors, taking up a perch close to the wire, 
partly to see what was up, partly to see whether master had 
his live bait tin with him, tail swaying gently up and down, 
ready to dash to cover at the first sign of danger, but out 
again in a few seconds to see if there really is any danger. 
I lost one lovely cock just before going home through his trying 
to investigate the interior of a small jug, which was half full 
of water. I am not in the habit of leaving jugs (or nets) in 
the aviary, and when I noticed the jug I half expected a 
young bird casualty, but was astonished to find that so cute a 
bird had fallen a victim. 
Like most othei- Chats and their kind, they light like 
demons among themselves, and the ones I took home had to 
have compartments to themselves. In the aviary, bar an 
occasional scrap, they were pretty good as long as their number 
did not exceed the number of convenient corners. The 
inclusion of one bird too many resulted in a sort of "puss-in- 
the- corner " game, which necessitated master having to catch 
out a couple, and even then they took some time to se''ttle down 
to corners again. Small seed -eaters they ignored, once they 
had satisfied themselves that there was nothing interesting in 
the seed pans. In a mixed aviary, or indeed, in freedom, a 
bird cannot as a rule afford to dally with a tit -bit; given half 
a chance the Blue Chats would snatch a mealworm from even 
a Laughing Thrush, no mean raiders themselves. They would 
even sometimes snaffle from a Grey-winged Ouzel one of the 
big earthworms the Ouzel soul loveth, after performing the 
