Dr. M. Amsler—Breeding Failures



79



Gambel’s Quail.— A handsomer edition, in my opinion, of the

Californian, always as wild as Hawks—'did not lay.


Chinese Painted Quail— total number of eggs dropped about the

aviary and occasionally laid together in the usual grass nest, over

sixty. The little hen showed no signs of sitting, so in desperation I

put eighteen of these tiny eggs under a small Bantam. To my great

surprise she did not break the eggs, and hatched over a dozen chicks,

but the poor broody was so enormous in comparison with her tiny

chicks that they were all crushed to death within twenty-four hours.


So much for the ground birds. I have served my first year’s

apprenticeship with Pheasants. It is not encouraging but, like everyone

else, I hope for better things in 1937.


Bengalese also were not very satisfactory—I evidently have a

superabundance of hens—only about a score were reared, and I found

many clutches of fifteen to twenty eggs, suggesting that several hens

had sat together, and as the cocks are evidently not polygamous a

large number of the eggs were clear.


Amethyst Starlings which, I understand, come from Abyssinia,

are, I consider, very hardy birds and winter perfectly in an aviary

with a dry but unheated shelter. It may be remembered that these

birds bred successfully in 1935 ; this year they again made use of

the same large log nest. The first clutch of three eggs was not incubated

at all, so was removed—-this was in June. In July two more eggs were

laid and incubated, and on the 18th one chick had appeared.


I foolishly decided that I would hand-rear the youngster, so as to

encourage the old birds to go to nest again. So I set out on my foul

errand on 29th July, when I at once saw by the parents’ behaviour that

something had happened. On looking into the box I found it empty,

and I had to wait nearly half an hour before the hen screwed up her

courage to feed her chick and show me his whereabouts. He was

perched in the middle of a dwarf juniper, where I easily captured him.


How, it is a well-known fact that it is much easier to hand-rear a

callow nestling than one who has just flown, and this bird was no

exception to that rule. I had a great deal of trouble with forced

feeding for the first two or three days, after which all went well until

I gave him (it turned out to be a hen) small broken-up earthworms.



