178 On the best system of feeding insectivorous birds.


disease, I will treat of fully at some future time when writing on the

ailments of birds. One very extraordinary thing is that I have seen

seed-eaters, finches and such like, with their feet caked with dirt,

and yet, if washed carefully with warm water, their feet have been

perfectly healthy ; needless to say that a quarter of this amount on

the foot of a soft-billed bird would result for certain in the loss of

claws or toes or both, proving that the feet of the latter birds are

very tender.


Some bird-keepers may say ‘‘What ami to do? My birds will

not go into the bath which would keep his feet clean.” Then I would

say do as I do (and I have several birds) ; take the bird carefully

in the hand and wash its feet in warm water after dissolving a little

boracic acid, and the more a bird is handled I find the tamer it

becomes. The sawdust I use for tame birds and used to the cage,

it would be absurd to use it for unsteady birds, the result would be

that the dust would be scattered all over the place and the water-tin

full of sawdust instead of water. For such birds I personally use

fresh cakes of fern-leaf moss, which I get myself from the woods ;

for those that are not so fortunate as to be living near the woods in

the country I know of nothing better than fine cocoa-nut fibre or

peat moss damped and pressed down firmly on the drawboard.


I do not use sand for any insectivorous birds except Wagtails.

For these I use zinc drawer boards to their cages, which I cover

with about a quarter-of-an-inch of clean sand, any sand will do;

there is always a shallow water-tin on the floor of their cages, and

as these birds are more often paddling in and out of the water than

sitting on their perches, it matters not how damp they make the sand,

in fact it is natural for them to run about on damp sand and their

feet in this way are kept in perfect order.


The toes of all wagtails (especially the greys) are very slender

and if these birds are kept on sawdust, and no water dish for them to

paddle in and their feet becomes dirty, they very quickly get diseased

toes, I have found them very liable to this. I have seen it advised

in bird-books that birds should have their cages cleaned out at the

farthest once a week. Well, all I can say is that I should be sorry

for the condition of my soft-billed birds if I had to leave them for a

week without cleaning them out. I prefer to do this every other



