Breeding a Chaffinch — Greenfinch Hybrid. 215 
Breeding a Chaffinch-Greenfinch Hybrid. 
By Ekv. J. M. Fatkbson. 
I mentioned to our Editor that I iiad succeeded in 
breeding one such hybrid, so he asked me to give a short 
account of it for our Bird Notes. 1 am afraid I cannot claim 
much credit for the sucoess, as the thing was quite a Ihike 
as far as my calculations were concerned. 
Last year I turned out (as I thought), two hen Green- 
linchcs into one of my garden aviaries, with a numlver 
of other Britishers, hoping to get some hybrids, but they turned 
out to be a pair, and reared several young Greenfinches*., 
This spring, having made my selection of birds to breed from, 
I put the odd birds into a separate aviary, all ol which birds 
1 imagined were cocks; and went away for a fortnight's! 
holiday. Amongst these imagined cocks were two of the 
young Greenfinches, reared last year, and a stray cock Chaf- 
finch, which had repeatedly entered this same aviary whilst it 
was unoccupied, and the door left open, and which finally 
was shut in as a regular inmate. On my return from my 
holiday I found that both these Greenfinches had built and 
laid a clutch of eggs, and on examination afterwards I found 
that two of the eggs were filled. The other cock birds in 
the same aviary were a Snow Bunting, and Eibbon Finch, so 
I thought that probably the Chaffinch must have filled them, 
and watched to see if he was paying any further attention, 
and before long my doubts were removed. 
As some pairs of softbills were nesting, and a clutch 
of Jacarini's due to hatch off, 1 had secured a stock of mag- 
gots, live ants' eggs, young mealworms, and egg-food. A 
small quantity of each was put in small pans on the floor 
of the aviary when the youngjsters were due to hatch out. 
Also twice a day 1 gave fresh groundsel, dandelion heads, 
seeding grass, and lettuce. The two youngsters throve splen- 
didly for four days, ant^l then were both thrown out of the 
nest. One was dead when picked up, and the otlier almost, 
but we revived it in the usual way, and put it under a hen 
Norwich Canary, wliich had Ijeen sitting only four days. To 
my great joy she took to it readily and started feeding it. 
I also helped to feed it with a " Fill -up " feeder, and egg- 
food moistened with cod liver oil. The youngster never went 
