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Correspondence



far south. This particular specimen, so Mr. Castang tells me, was

driven out of its usual course by storms and was discovered in a some¬

what exhausted state on the beach. It was taken home and fed by

a fisherman, and Messrs. Hagenbeck’s representative, who was making

a collection of Penguins to take home to Hamburg, hearing of it, was

not slow in acquiring it, and I am told it arrived in excellent condition.


D. Seth-Smith.



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.


SHAMA ATTACKING MOUSE


In the March number of the Avictjltural Magazine appeared a note

from me concerning the killing of mice by a Blue Rock Thrush. At that

time I picked up several dead mice in the adjoining aviary and imagined

that these had been damaged by the Thrush and had crawled through the

wire-netting dividing the two aviaries, and had died from their injuries.


Some ten days ago I noticed a cock Shama in this aviary dancing about

on the ground and evidently attacking something. On closer inspection

I found that his attentions were directed against a three-quarter grown

mouse which escaped up a privet bush while I watched. Meantime

I had called up my man and a friend who is a member of the Avicultural

Society, and we saw the Shama fly into the bush and again attack the mouse,

which then jumped back to the ground, where the Shama quickly battered

it to death by a series of vicious pecks.


Maurice Amsler.



SPICE FINCH AND GRASSFINCH MATING


It may interest members of the Avicultural Society that I think with

any luck I shall be introducing a new kind of Finch ; but, of course, the cross

may have been done before, viz. a Spice Finch and a Long-tailed Grassfinch.

So far I have not been able to ascertain with any certainty which their

sexes are. The Grassfinch, I discovered this morning, was sitting on the eggs,

and its mate was hovering close by, and I have no other Grassfinch in the

aviary, but certainly the nest was put together by the Spice Finch. I find

these little birds make no end of nests just for the spree of the thing, which

mostly consist of large pieces of bamboo twigs. My Zebra Finches are hard

at it at the moment, and nothing seems to daunt them.


Evelyn H. Barclay.



DISPLAY OF HANGING PARROTS


My Golden-backed and Worcester’s Hanging Parrots engage in a somewhat

unusual form of courtship ceremony unlike anything I have witnessed in other

species. The Worcester’s, who is the hen, takes up her position right in the



