Chirps and 
Chatter. 
(89) THE BIRD WORLD. 
Hoopoe on the Wing. 
It will be noticed that the crest is not at all noticeable in flight, the most striking peculiarity of the flying bird being its broad black-and-white wings. 
noctua ), now a British bird, as I remarked last 
month. The Passerine Owl, however, has never 
been seen wild in England; it inhabits Northern 
Europe and Siberia, and is not a well-known bird 
like the Little Owl. Both are small Owls, brown- 
and-white in colour, and compact in shape, with 
pale-coloured eyes ctnd plain heads—devoid of ear- 
tufts. But though the Little Owl is a small bird 
as owls go, it is much bigger than the Passerine, 
being as large as a Blackbird at least, whereas the 
other species but little exceeds a Sparrow in size. 
Surely these small species of Owls ought to be ad¬ 
mitted to the show bench; they would awaken 
much interest, and are more suited for caging than 
many species often shown. The three small Euro¬ 
pean species alone—Scops, Little, and Passerine— 
would make up a very interesting class, and the 
South-American Burrowing Owl could go' with 
them. 
REPRODUCED BEAKS. 
A very curious case was reported recently in 
Cage Birds, in which whole stocks of Canaries, be¬ 
longing to more than one fancier, became affected 
with a disease, which caused the upper bill to rot 
away, the lower jaw remaining intact. It appeared 
in the two bird-rooms affected under circumstances 
which precluded the possibility of contagion, and 
was for some time an absolute puzzle. Later on it 
was shown that the two sets of birds had been 
washed with the same soap, and it is suggested that 
this, entering at the nostrils, had caused the strange 
decay of the upper bill. It was stated that the 
beaks of the birds affected were beginning to grow 
again—a very strange fact, for, as most of my 
readers know, the bill of birds is a bony structure, 
merely sheathed with horn, and in vertebrates so 
highly organised as they, bony parts are seldom re¬ 
produced when lost. 
THE DANGER OF GRIT. 
Mr. G. E. Weston recently struck a timely note 
of warning in respect to the danger of giving grit 
indiscriminately to newly-imported Siberian Gold¬ 
finches, which had been long without it. I have 
heard that Gouldian Finches are also peculiarly 
susceptible to injury from this cause, and have seen 
a case in which three hybrids between the Guinea- 
Fowl and common Fowl—big, robust-looking birds 
—died off very rapidly when freely supplied with grit 
after long abstinence from it. A post-mortem 
showed their insides fairly packed with the grit, 
and there could be no doubt that this had been the 
cause of death. 
