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Nesting of Sandhill Cranes



NESTING OF SANDHILL CRANES



In the June Magazine I proclaimed that the Sandhill Cranes had

laid and were incubating their eggs. They did this in most exemplary

fashion, relieving each other at regular intervals, though it was noticed

that if rain came on it was always the female’s turn to be sitting : her

husband would be in shelter until the rain stopped, then he came

out and relieved his dripping wife. There is this to be said for him,

he did not desert his post during the very hot days, but sat panting

with wide open beak.


A chick hatched on 8th June, a pretty russet-coloured mite covered

with very thick down. It seemed lively, and readily took the food its

father gave it. We noticed that he seemed more interested in it than

its mother was: he brooded it, while she wandered about. For three days

all went well, then the old birds seemed to lose interest in the chick,

they were not so ready to feed it, and paid less attention to its calls.

The weather, too, was less propitious, with violent thunderstorms and

colder nights, and the chick found it very exhausting to follow its

parents through the wet herbage. On the 13th it was found dead.

Its parents did not appear to miss it, though the male bird had been

very savage all the time they were incubating.


The other egg was addled. The nest was a platform of bits of stick

and grass, roughly put together. Both birds took part in its construction.


E. F. C.



PARROTS AS FOSTER-PARENTS


By The Marquess of Tavistock


In a large Parrakeet collection one sometimes has to try experiments

in fostering deserted eggs on species different to those by which the

eggs were produced. Numbers of the Parrot family are, on the whole,

fairly accommodating about accepting eggs different in size or shape

from their own, but trouble may arise at a later stage when the chicks

make their appearance. Unfortunately for the success of fostering

ventures, some baby psittacine birds enter the world dressed, like



