46 A. F. Moody—Notes on the Birds at Lilford, 1930 and 1931


if others should be imported, it would be best to confine them to a

well-lighted indoor aviary. From Mr. Phillipps’s experience it would

seem that small insects formed a considerable portion of the food

of the nestling.


As may be seen from the accompanying plate, the sexes are almost

alike when adult though the cock-bird has more red on the face and

throat than the hen. Our plate appears to be wrong in one respect,

namely in the colour of the eyes, which, in the adult birds, is white.


D. S-S.



NOTES ON THE BIRDS AT LILFORD,


1930 AND 1931


By A. F. Moody


I am permitted by their owner to send a few particulars of the birds

at Lilford during seasons 1930 and 1931. These, of a brief and scrappy

nature, are very incomplete. Still, failing more important matter,

I trust the editor may find a corner for them.


In the first place, with much good money going to the nation’s

need, aviculture, like other interests, has suffered. We endeavour,

therefore, to replace stock as much as possible by breeding or by

exchange.


The two comparatively mild, damp seasons have also been conducive

to losses by death ; certainly more so than the cold, dry winter of

1929-30. Our greatest loss, of course, as recorded in the January

(1931) number of this Magazine, was a female Whooping Crane (Grus

americana), a much lamented bird which valiantly strove to the very

last to live, and apparently succumbed to sheer old age.


Since then, three other Cranes, a Sarus, a Manchurian, and an

Asiatic White have died natural deaths. This quartet had lived

38, 42, 41, and 41 years respectively in the collection, making it

appear, supposing them to have been youthful when received, that

the natural lives of the larger Cranes may possibly be in the

neighbourhood of forty-five years.



