Correspondence



289



SLUGS AND YOUNG BIRDS


Will slugs, the large ones, eat young birds alive ? I firmly believe

they can and do. Two young Pekin Robins, on leaving their nest,

went to sleep on the cement floor under the shelter, and I found them

badly eaten and slug slime all over them, although they were perfectly

fit the night before at 9.30 p.m., fast asleep, and were fed well. Now,

yesterday at 5.30 a.m. I saw another one half-way up a bush with a huge

grey slug eating the little chap up, just dead. I have noticed the same

thing happen to the small Gold-breasts, etc., when they sleep in bushes

near the ground. Quite well at night, and in the morning dead at foot of

bush and sometimes carried a yard away with the slug on it, and showing

the trail as well from the bush. The birds seem mostly to be tackled

about the region of the heart. At night the birds appear to grip very

firmly (since I could not move a baby Shama from his outside perch until

he woke up and it took a few seconds before he released his clutch of the

twig), and also sheer fright would probably make them grip harder

in the dark night. I feel positive now that those little Peter’s Fire-

finches died the same way, as I have had no trouble from all the birds

in that division since ; no kills.


I have had visits from the vile Sparrow-hawks and Kites. 1 I get

“ fed up ” sometimes with their kills and the shocks they cause

the birds.


K. Drake.


Garrick,


Mylor,


Falmouth, Cornwall.



A PROPOSED STOCK BOOK FOR RARE SPECIES


Why is there no form of avicultural stock-book to control the

breeding of very rare Parrakeets ? I am told that Bourke’s,

Turquoisines, and other birds which are being bred in this country

now are either extinct or so rare in their native country that no more

are likely to be imported. Surely there is a great danger of this limited

stock becoming inbred, sterile, and finally extinct. I am a complete


1 There are no Kites in Cornwall. —Ed.



