i66 Nesting Notes on the Yellow-billed Cardinal. 
egg and biscuit, plus a few mealworms was supplied. Two jf 
the youngsters left the nest on June lOth, and were promptly 
severely mobbed by the Green and Red-crested Cardinals until, 
at last, in order to have any hope of saving their lives, I caught 
up all three and placed them in a Yorkshire Canary show cage. 
All three seemed at this time to be most strong and vigorous 
young birds, and so my hopes of successfully rearing them were 
li'gh. The parents continued to feed most diligently, and 
' everything in the garden seemed lovely." But .... 
about this time other matters almost wholly claimed my atten- 
tion, and I could not watch over the progress of the young birds 
so carefully as hitherto. What was my horror then to discover, 
on looking at the birds carefully on June 12th (two days later) 
that they were all suffering from violent diarrhoea. This may 
in part have been brought on by some live ants' eggs I had 
supplied to the youngsters during the last two days, though the 
lot I received seemed quite clean and fresh. In my experience 
however, it is a common thing for young birds of this genus 
to contract diarrhoea shortly after leaving the nest. Food 
wliich has appeared to suit them perfectly whilst in the nest does 
not, for some, to me, obscure reason, seem to suit them later on. 
T quickly dosed them all with a few drops each of castor oil, 
but the following morning one, the youngest, was dead. To 
tl-e survivors I gave a few drops of chlorodyne and supplied 
green fly and caterpillars both to the parents and to the young 
themselves, but the latter had not commenced to feed them- 
selves, and these dainties did not tempt them. In the egg food 
I also mixed a good quantity of powdered cuttle-fish bone, but 
in spite of all another was dead by evening, and the survivor 
looked pretty certain to follow along the same road. I caught 
it up, cleaned its vent, which was in a horrible state, with warm 
water. I then dangled green caterpillars and spittle bugs in 
front of it for over an hour, a job requiring a deal of patience, 
but had almost given it up as a bad job, when I at length suc- 
ceeded in inducing the little fellow to have a go at them. After 
this both the parents and I fed it every few hours with cater- 
pillars, green fly, and spittle bugs; it gradually improved in 
health until at the time of the arrival of our editor, on the 22nd 
June, on a short visit, it had almost entirely recovered, but was 
still weak, and had not entirely thrown off the diarrhoea. On 
