370 
Correspondence. 
the bird's back. This may be of interest to some readers 
of " 13. N." — (It is a very interesting occuri'ence, and J 
am sending the bug to the British Museum, and on getting 
their report, will refer to the incident again. — Ed.) 
My Garden is well favoured with wild birds— from 
Cormorants, Kingfishers, and Red -shanks, to Hawks and Gold- 
finches, I counted a flock of about 20 of the latter this after- 
noon feeding on garden seeds. 
In a letter dated October 24th, he writes: 
I saw two House Martins to-day, which must be rather 
late for them. 
The Chiff-chaff was singing in my garden (wild) from 
the middle of September till the 27th. 
Lord Montagu, of Beaulieu, shot a Pin-tail Duck in im- 
mature plumage, at the mouth of the river, a little while 
back, which certainly looks as though the bird did sometimes 
nest in the South. 
On a postcard dated November 7th, he further writes: 
When shooting to-day — a Greater Spotted Woodpecker 
ran about on an oak tree for ten minutes, just over my 
head. 
Correspondence. 
YOUNG GOULDIAN FINCH REARED BY JAVA SPARROW. 
SiK. — My experience with Gouldians this yeur has been 
to say the least, very interesting. You will remember that my 
initial attempt to breed this lovely finch ended in disaster through 
rats. I had no thought of my remaining pair attempting nesting 
this year, as both were immature birds, however, towerds the end of 
September they rapidly came into full plumage, and rather to my 
regret commenced nesting — five eggs were laid and duly hatched, 
and the young weie fed for about ten days, then the fine weather 
broke up and we experienced heavy cold rain. The nest was 
situated in an exposed position and experienced the full force of 
the gale; I kept the nest under close observation and found the 
birds were not feeding properly and on examination found the 
young apparently dead; but after holding one in my hand and 
breathing on it gently, I found sign of life and promptly wrapped 
them all in fiannel and held them near the fire — all revived. 1; 
knew it was useless returning them to the saturated nest, so I put 
the strongest of them under a sitting Java Sparrow, and attempted 
to hand rear the remaining four — 1 fed them on milk sop up to 
