Mrs. Christine Irvine—Breeding Firefinches



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terribly. I kept her by the living-room fire for some weeks, leaving

a well-backed up fire at night. She became quite tame, flying about

the room, and gradually her cage door was rarely shut. Every after¬

noon she took her siesta in the hearth and so determined was she to

get there that she would return repeatedly if shooed away.


Very early in the spring I secured a mate for her, and they both

went up to the bird-room. It was only a few weeks before I saw the

cock carrying feathers about, and they built a nest in a branch of a pine-

tree I had hung on the wall. The nest was like a Wren’s, but they

never lined it or used it. Whether because I looked at it, although

I did not touch it, or because a Pintail Whydah did I do not know ;

but they built another high up in a big lettuce-crate I had painted

with solignum and filled with soft hay, as a bedroom for the smaller

birds. The nest was in the side, and absolutely hidden by branches

across the end. The cock knew I could provide feathers, and he would

take them off my shoe. He was so insistent that my pillow is quite

thin. Shortly he disappeared. He sat nearly all day, and the hen

sat at night. During the time they were sitting the Pintail had to be

caught; it was difficult and very disturbing, but they were not too

upset and sat again as soon as all was quiet. About thirteen days

after I first noticed the cock disappear I noticed the hen very much

more interested than usual in looking over soil I had carried up and

in the mealworms. I started to grub hunt at once, and wrote off for

gentles and by great good fortune a friend had a lot of bran that had

gone maggotty. These white grubs were devoured. I went into the

woods and found numerous grubs and little caterpillars by tree-roots

and under the hedges. I carried them home in soil and the Eirefinches

weren’t two minutes picking them out. These with cut-up mealworms

and soaked seed and much seeding grass kept them going till the

gentles arrived. Unfortunately the cock Canary developed a passion

for gentles and mealworms and I had always to provide two dishes far

apart, as he would stand over them with wings outspread shouting

that they were his. I gave them some dainty every two hours. At the

end of the second week or even perhaps a little before, they began to

fail a little in their interest. *1 thought also Mrs. Firefinch did not

brood at all night or day. I was sure the baby or babies were dead.



