254 The Breeding of the Cordon Bleu at Liberty 
The Breeding of the Cordon Bleu at Liberty. 
By the Marquis of Tavistock. 
In aviculture it is often the unexpected that happens, but 
the unexpected is usually the unpleasant and not the pleasins^. 
Tf you expect to fail in breeding some bird, against difficulties, 
you will seldom prove wrong in your expectations, but if you 
expect to succeed, ten to one your hopes will end in failure. 
Still there are exceptions, and my Cordon Bleus are certainly 
a striking example. 
Late in June I bought a few pairs of Cordon Bleus as 
part of my experiment with waxbills at liberty. After keeping 
them shut up for a few days to grow accustomed to their 
surroundings, I released them in the garden. But apparently 
liberty was not to their taste, for, although provided with food 
and water outside, a few hours later every one of them had 
entered the parrakeet aviaries through the ^in. mesh. There 
they stayed, for although an odd one or two would sometimes 
come out again and hop about the lawn in the early morning, 
the majority stayed with the parrakeets. Newly imported 
Cordon Bleus are said by some writers to be extremely delicate. 
They are nothing like so fragile as Fire and Dufresne's Finches, 
but the hens did not do over well and I picked up two or three 
dead in the course of the next few weeks. But the birds 
remained in the aviaries, and as my intention was to have Cordon 
Bleus at liberty and not in aviaries I started driving them out 
every morning. This treatment rather offended some of them, 
and they left altogether, but three pairs settled down nicely and 
passed through a successful moult. Now and again I saw a 
cock displaying with a bit of grass in his beak, but the weeks 
passed by and we saw nothing of eggs or young ones. The 
birds spent a good deal of time, in company with other species 
of waxbills, in the kitchen garden, where they fed on the orna- 
mental grass Eragrostis clcgans, of which all keepers of 
waxbills should take note. About mid-September a cock and 
hen were picked up dead, but about the same time a small globe- 
shaped nest of the flower stems of eragrostis was found in an 
American bramble about four feet from the ground. The nest 
was close to the path, but the Cordon Bleus, to whom it 
belonged, were not readily disturbed by passers-by. It was 
