54 
NATURE STUDY. 
birds have grown so tame that the slamming of the screen door 
only causes them to hop off the veranda on to the steps or lawn. 
On July 3, the female, which is a rich brownish chestnut above, 
where the male is black, but which otherwise has the same col¬ 
oring as her mate, arrived with three well-grown little ones at 
the cigar box. These were practically chestnut all over, the 
belly being a dirty white, and had not the strong dividing line 
across the breast which both adult male and female have, 
where the head and throat color stops suddenly and the white 
of the belly begins. Neither did the little ones have the in¬ 
tense rufous sides of the adults, but the white tail feathers were 
distinct. Later, on the same day, the male appeared with two 
much smaller birds in his care. These had hardly lost their yel¬ 
low line from around the edge of the bill; were not strong 
enough to crack the seeds themselves, so the attentive father did 
it for them. Something dire and dreadful happened to one of 
the father’s flock, for ever after he appeared with only one chick. 
Some of the interesting things noticed about this family I have 
jotted down in my note book, hoping some member of the 
Ornithological Section of the Institute can explain them to me j 
and I here elaborate these notes with this hope in view. The 
male chewink never took a bath, that is, in public. The female 
took one daily and showed the three larger children in her care 
how to be cleanly, and we often saw all four in the soup dish at 
once. The male never initiated his charge into the mysteries of 
the bath. There was no communication between the two groups 
of birds. The mother and her three never noticed the father 
and his one little one. They would all feed from the seeds in 
the path at the same time, each completely ignoring the other 
branch of the family. Once only I saw the father give one of 
the older birds of the female’s brood a seed which he had shelled. 
I saw the mother once fly at the smallest bird in anger. The 
male never noticed in any fashion the mother of his five children. 
The female was rid of her little birds sooner than the male was 
of his, but for the week that the father alone was busied in 
feeding his charge he never noticed the mother, or the birds 
