Autumn in the Aviary. - 185 



failures in the early part of the season; the writer has often 

 found it so, especially with sj^ecies of the family TURDIDAE, 

 the last nests of the season beiiii^' frequently successful ones, 

 while the earlier ventures had entirely failed. 



\\ hat excitement, too, there appears to be among the 

 occupants of our aviaries, how l:)usy they are! how active and 

 alert ! what .s^atherinq" toi^ether of small parties and then with a 

 wild whirr of win^s very sudden dispersals. I have often 

 thou.Ljht as 1 watched them : the arduous labours of the season 

 beinii" ended they induls^e in a sort of " Harvest Home " period, 

 while recouping their vigour and gathering together energy 

 and vitality to carry them through the dark period of the year. 

 They need some help, too, from the aviarist to assist them in 

 storing up energy to withstand winter's hardship, and thus to 

 lay, as it were, a foundation for the next season's successes. 



It is the busy season for the aviculturist, for with the 

 advent of October the work of renovation and making all snug 

 for the winter must begin. Possibly I can best illtistrate the 

 need of this by briefly referring to an instance of the lack of it. 

 Some few years ago 1 saw a series of aviaries, some new, others 

 of older standing, but all in first class condition, and the 

 breeding season therein had been most successful. I saw them 

 again the following season, when the measure of success was 

 not so great, though young of some very interesting species 

 were reared. T saw them again later when they were a mass 

 of tangled growth, almost im])enetrable in parts, and dank and 

 dark because very little light and sun could penetrate the dense 

 masses of foliage to dry the herbage and ground beneath, and 

 possibly on the ground lay more than one season's produce of 

 decaying leaves, etc., to enhance the adverse conditions existing 

 where once they had been almost ideal — the main fault being 

 that I verily believe the pruning knife had scarcely been used 

 since they were inaugurated — of course, the last season was 

 unsuccessful, not that young birds were not reared, but owing 

 to the fact of the almost appalling losses among the reared 

 young birds in the fall of the year — the owner of the aviary 

 wrongly blamed the " Wilderness Aviary " for the ill-luck; he 

 might rightly have blamed the wilderness conditions that he had 

 allowed to come about — note that when the^xonditions of his 



