DISEASES OE THE YELLOWHAMMER. 
if moss abounds in the neighbourhood. You will generally 
find either three or five fledglings in the nest ; if three, you may 
almost depend on all of them being cock birds. The eggs are 
most peculiar, looking, indeed, as though they were inscribed 
with Chinese characters. Fledgling yellowhammers hung in 
the same room with a chaffinch or linnet will speedily acquire 
its note. 
How to Feed the Yellowhammer. — It will eat almost 
anything; indeed, unlike all other finches, it is only by con- 
stantly varying its food that it can be kept in health. In 
the summer, you may give it rape, canary, and millet seed, 
whole oats, and a plentiful supply of caterpillars, and any sort 
of insects. In the winter, the crumb of white or brown bread, 
lean raw beef, poppy-seed, hemp-seed, and oats. The smaller 
seeds, such as rape or poppy, he will swallow whole; while 
the larger sorts, such as canary, oats, and millet, he will strip 
of the husk, and then swallow. 
The Yellowhammer’s Cage. — It may have as large, as 
open, and as handsome a cage as you please. Its song is by 
no means powerful, yet it is very agreeable. It is particularly 
clear and mellow. Always take care to provide the yellow- 
hammer with plenty of good sharp sand at the bottom of his 
cage, and, as he is a coarse and heavy feeder, his cage will 
need cleaning out more often than that of the majority of 
smaller song-birds. Be sure he has plenty of clean water to 
drink and to bathe in. 
Diseases oe the Yellowhammer, and How to Cure 
Them. — The caged yellowhammer seldom attains a greater age 
than sis years. The complaint to which it is chiefly subject is 
consumption. You will know this by the bird’s puffed and 
inflated appearance. Give it plenty of warm food, such as 
hemp-seed and crushed oats, and take care that the bowels 
are sufficiently opened. If they are not, give him a good-sized 
house-spider. A piece of oak bark in their drinking water will 
strengthen their stomachs. Some fanciers recommend un- 
limited watercresses. Bechstein recovered a siskin, who had 
been brought to death’s door to perfect health by giving 
nothing but watercresses for three days. 
There is scarcely another bird with whom the moulting 
period goes so hard as with the yellowhammer. I am con- 
vinced, however, that if the “ moulting-box ” were adopted, its 
chance of recovery would be increased threefold. 
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