1G2 Simhirds in Captivity. 



of the cage, and the Inrd, ('liiiging to tlie wires over the pot, 

 head downwards, thrust its thread-like tongue into tlie dihited 

 honey, and greedily sucked it in; it seemed to do this every 

 few moments all day long. Then the question of proper food 

 arose. Honey alone did not appear to me to be sullicient. 

 I supplied banana and orange. It liked to suck up the orange 

 juice but the banana was scarcely touched. 1 caught a spider 

 and offered it to the bird. It took it from my fingers at 

 once, and before swallowing it held it suspended at the tip of 

 its long beak, which pointed into the air, and at the same time 

 the little bird's throat throbbed as it gave forth a subdued 

 but pleasant warbling song. From that time, onwards, every 

 spider I came across in the aviary I gave to the Sunbird. 

 It was evident then that the bird's natural food consisted 

 largely of insects, as well as the nectar of flowers. 



Now honey, I believe, consists almost entirely of carbo- 

 hydrates, and we know that proteid or nitrogenous food is also 

 necessary for an animal's nutrition. 1 wished therefore to a'dd 

 something to the honey for a regular food. Milk contains all 

 the substances necessary for the young mammal. Is it suitable 

 for birds ? Birds do not naturally get milk, and many Grey 

 Parrots have I'^'m killed by a diet of milk sop. But Grey 

 Parrots are naturally vegetarians, and one can understand that 

 a digestive system adapted for seed food may be upset ])y the 

 animal product, milk. The digestive secretions, liowever, of a 

 bird used to animal food, such as the Sunbird, which can digest 

 the proteids and fats of insects, as well as the carbo-hydrates 

 of nectar, might not unreasonably be supposed to act similarly 

 on the like ingredients of milk, even without the addition of 

 such digestive ferments as pepsin, or the diastase contained in 

 malt extract or Mellin's food. Rightly or wrongly, this is how 

 I argued, and the whole time I kept the bird it was fed on 

 a mixture of equal parts of English honey and Nestle's con- 

 densed milk, the only extras being sweet oranges and spiders 

 occasionally. 



I may say, in passing, that my Varied Lorikeets, which 

 likewise did not eat seed, lived for years on a mixture of 

 honey, condensed milk, and powdered Osborne biscuits, with 

 no additions whatever, for they would not take fruit. The 



