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E. W. Chaplin—Avicultural Recollections



the door giving access in winter when the door is kept shut. I later

added glass to the upper part of the flight to keep off driving rain.

My birds have no other protection whatever. In this I put a pair

each of green, blue, and yellow Budgerigars, and a pair of Crimson-

crested Cardinals. The Budgerigars breed only too freely but the

Cardinals, like the Virginian Nightingales, laid two or three times each

year, hatched their eggs, and deserted the young when about ten days

old. They also varied their diet by robbing the Budgerigars of eggs

and an occasional young one. For three years they were in perfect

health and condition and then I gave them away owing to their

predatory habits. I then put in a pair of Zebra Finches. Although

I have seen it stated in the Magazine that they do not do well with

Budgerigars mine did very well indeed.


One little gentleman deserves to have his actions recorded. The

first cock that I put in never looked really fit but he and his wife set

to work in a coco-nut husk and had been sitting for about a week

when he unfortunately died. As the hen was usually flying about

when I went into the aviary I concluded that she was not going to

take on the responsibility of rearing a family without help. I did her

an injustice. Two or three days after the first cock died I bought

another, recently imported. I usually prefer to keep new birds in

quarantine for a few weeks but as the poor little lady seemed lonely

I turned him in with her after four days. Within a few minutes of

his being turned out he flew straight into the husk where the others

had nested. His manner made me wonder whether there could possibly

be young in the nest and I concluded that if there were he had certainly

gone in to settle their little hashes for them. There really were young

and the hen had evidently continued sitting for about a week and for

some days at any rate had fed her family unaided. All day long

the mother and the foster-father tended the family until about half

an hour before sunset when they would allow themselves a little time

off for love-making, sitting cuddled up side by side on a branch in

the flight. One day four young and the next day one more came

out of the nest. All grew into strong, healthy birds, and the foster-

father was as assiduous in his attentions to them as any real father

could have been. All the same I think that sometimes, when the



