Notes on some Birds in Confinement.



39



many individuals I have kept females seemed to be longer-lived

than males; one female attained to an age of four years and seven

months, and I believe she would have survived an unusually cold

winter if I had been more careful about the ■ night-temperature

of the room in which she was kept.


Wryneck (Jynx torquilld).


This bird was for many years one of my favorites, but,

unfortunately, also the one with which I have had no success

in keeping for any time. The nestlings take at first, greedily,

artificial food mixed with insects, but when they have once

learned to take food by themselves, they become more dainty in

their appetite. They continue to thrive while fresh ants and

ants’ eggs are obtainable, but after that, not even a liberal supply

of mealworms and dried ants’ eggs will save them from becoming

anaemic, and dying before the middle of winter.


Thick-Knee (Oedicnemus crepitans').


I kept this bird once only. It came to me as a nestling in

down, a singular creature with a most violent temper. It would

hiss and peck at the hand offering a piece of meat or worm, and

then tear away the morsel and swallow it. However, it grew

rapidly, and after a month or two was strong enough to escape

from its aviary into a small garden. I had given up all hope of

seeing it again, when it was discovered crouching in the well-

known Thick-Knee fashion in the middle of the lawn. How it

escaped the cats, then and afterwards, has always been a mystery

to me. I pinioned the bird, and when it had recovered, allowed

it the free run of the garden. There it lived, foraging for itself

and partly fed with scraps of meat and soaked biscuit, for a

whole year, until it was killed in its second winter by a deep fall

of snow, having reached an age of i year and 7 months.

Gradually it had lost much of its shyness. It jealously guarded

the dish in which it received its food against Sparrows and

Blackbirds, and in the second summer of its life was sometimes

seen amusing itself by aimlessly running about and practising

the Bustard-like attitudes, by which the male Thick-Knee woos

the hen. (cf. Bonhote, Avicultural Magazine , 1906, p. 10S).



