1496. Chiisai is showing a growing inclination to meet me at the cage doors, fly to my shoulder when hungry, make the hunger call and ride upon me to the food dish and there, still on my shoulder or hand, await a "shot" of soft-food from the medicine dropper. Okil has consistently refused to accept food administered in this way for a long time (2 or 3 weeks?) but he likes to have the dish held out to him. Both like to sit on my hand and have me hold them up to inac- cessible corners and crevices where they can probe for insects, but they do not like to be handled, that is: restrained; held; caught. Unlike the road-runners, neither objects seriously to being confronted in a corner. They are perfectly confiding. They catch so many yellow-jackets that these insects form a significant proportion of their food supply. While they are still pretty thorough in preparing them, they are not so much so as formerly, and the 'jackets are sometimes swallowed while still capable of some movement of legs. August 4th. It was Chiisai, this morning, that was the more interested in nesting, and although he (?) did not actually carry material to the nest, he worked in it frequently and also arranged it when it was handed to him. Twice he brought pine-needles up to my shoulder and dropped it there. Once he carried a needle up to my hand held head-high against the wire and was there joined by Okil, both probing about with their bills as if to find a suitable place to put the needle and "talking" over the problem. The impulse soon subsided only to reappear from time to time when I visited the cage.(Time now: 11:30 A.M.). Noon. Rhody is at his everlasting preening, near the cage. During the moult he spends hours each day at this job. Chiisai, on coming to me for food, brought a pine needle, talking. Rhody spent all the rest of the day in the vicinity and on the top of the cage preening, sunning and keeping an eye on operations where I was dismantling the wind screen protecting Brownie's Oct.-Nov. nest of 1933. (See photograph p. 483 A). Here an alligator lizard was uncovered and offered to Rhody. (It had had lost a part of its tail and a new portion about one inch long was in process of growth). The lizard, after being played with according to form, was finally eaten, and less than an hour later (but more than half an hour) it was seen that R was trying to dis- gorge something; so I went over to watch. He made perhaps 40 or 50 more attempts without success (I could hear a slight sound in his throat) then came to stand 4 feet from me and preen for a long time. Lately Rhody has eaten only one mouse per day and meat in about equal bulk, possibly a sign that he was getting "lined" with mouse fur. In earlier notes it has been suggested, more or less jokingly, that a lizard diet might serve to loosen up some of this accumulation, and this incident suggests that there may be a basis of fact in the idea. I was disappointed in his lack of success as I had hoped any matter disgorged my throw some light upon the rapidity of his digestive processes. While he was preening beside me it was seen that the sharply pointed tips of the feathers.... (An interruption here. This paragraph of Aug. 4th. notes is being written on the 5th. At this moment: 10:56 A.M., Rhody has just sailed down past the window. He is at the open door, looking in....I went out and he was given a piece of meat. He is basically a green bird).