All rights reserved. June,. 1911. 



BIRD NOTES: 



THE 



JOURNAL OF THE FOREIGN BIRD CLUB. 



Sunbirds in Captivity. 



By L. W. Hawkins^. 



In response to the Editor's desire tliat I should send 

 some notes concerning my little experience with Sunbirds, 

 I will endeavour to do so. It was on January 10th, 1902, 

 that I purchased my first Sunbird. Mr. Hamlyn had received 

 some four or live from India, in the latter part of 1901, and 

 all but one of these had been speedily sold. Some of the 

 others were different and brighter in appearance. Whether 

 these were of a different species, or merely specimens in full 

 colour, I am unable to say, for I did not see them., How- 

 ever the one that remained was evidently a Purple Sunbird 

 out of colour, and Mr. Hamlym had kept it on a diet of honey 

 well diluted with water. The bird was in excellent health and 

 it became mine for the sum of thirty shillings. 



When I let it out of the travelling bird box, in which 

 it had been kept, into a cage of about four cubic feet capacity 

 it immediately began to sing, and to sing beautifully, too. 

 This was an agreeable surprise to me, for my attention had 

 previously been given almost exclusively to small seed -eating 

 birds, most of which cannot claim to have good singing voices, 

 however charming they may be in other directions. I had been 

 fairly successful with Finches, and in 1900 received medals from 

 the Avicultural Society for breeding the Masked Finch, and 

 the Cuba Finch for the first time in these Islands. But, here 

 was something new to me. This small Sunbird actually gave 

 me credit for good intentions towards it, instead of dashing 

 itself about as most of my other birds did when I approached 

 them. I liked the bird better than any other I then possessed 

 or which I had previously kept. 



I put the diluted honey into a small pot at the bottom 



