Practical Bird Keeping. — II. The British Warblers. *35


In the first place, we must have shelter from cold winds,

which is best secured by a palisading of tongued and grooved

boards, at least seven feet high, extending the entire length of

the aviary on the North and East sides. Our aviary, however,

must not be built against a wall, or a hedge, or under trees, any

one of which conditions will render it absolutely impossible to pre¬

vent the ingress of mice, rats and weasels. My original aviaries

are in a small walled garden and, I regret to say, I followed the

conventional design and built against the walls, the inevitable

consequence being that I have been continually pestered with

vermin and I look upon these aviaries now as chiefly useful for

winter housing. My breeding aviary has now been up almost

two years ; it has been absolutely free from vermin and has given

better results in every way. The space between the palisading

and the aviary I use partly for a service passage but chiefly for

observation purposes ; I have planted it with fruit trees, which

bear well, and had a pair of Redstarts in it last year, which

flourished exceedingly and almost fed themselves on insects.

If an aviary is to be built in a walled garden, there should be a

space at least 6ft. wide between its sides and the walls of the

garden.


The South and West sides of the above-mentioned aviary

are boarded to the height of 3ft.; where the boards enter the

ground they are protected by a length of small meshed wire

netting 2ft. wide, half of which width is nailed to the skirting

and half is buried in a horizontal position under the soil.


The size of netting most suitable for a Warbler’s aviary is

five-eights of an inch: if three-quarters of an inch mesh is used,

Wrens and Blue-Tits will find their way in and carry off a

quantity of live insect food.


The size and shape of a breeding aviary are, I think,

immaterial ; if it is mouse-proof, sunny, sheltered and not over¬

crowded one may reasonably hope for good results, but it is

really waste of time trying to work with a mouse-ridden aviary

because any breeding results will be merely flukes.


We now come to the subject of winter aviaries and we

shall have a choice of three courses which we may briefly

describe as (1) no heat, (2) heat or (3) some heat. So far as my



