Correspondence.



293



catching them should trouble seem to threaten. The maxim should,

and must be ‘‘ Don’t wait until the danger materialises ! ” People

are by nature unorthordox, but because “ Mr. Brown” keeps a reputed

bully with his small birds, and tells you he does so with impunity,

don’t copy his example even if he claims innumerable breeding suc¬

cesses, and that he never has tragedies. The evil that men do lives

after them, whereas the man himself is apt to forget it even before

the happy moment that his spirit quits its abode of clay. Nothing

succeeds like success, and nothing rushes into print half as quickly.

The failures have to be dragged out of a man willy-nilly before they

can be made to face the footlights of public criticism. The worst

fate that can happen to an aviculturist is so to live up to a reputa¬

tion. It generally ends in his losing what little he had. All of

which means beware of the man with a reputation for daring un¬

orthodoxy, and who paints all his birds as if they were angels on a

Christmas card. The truth is that all nature is cruel and ferocious

and your friend sees things through rose-coloured glasses. In fact,

the wish becomes the father to the thought. Finally, remember it

may be too late to mend, or later you may find it is never too late to

pick up corpses.



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC



MURDEROUS TENDENCIES IN BIRDS.


Speaking of wagtails in his article on British softbills (p. 225) Dr. Lovell-

Keays says :—“ I am rather sceptical about their murderous tendencies ” and of

blue-tits he observes :—“ As to their being murderous I simply don’t believe it.”

Now I do not for a moment suppose that our friend wishes to suggest that my

assertions to the contrary are wilful mistatements : he simply fails to understand

how it was that his birds, lodged in an aviary seventy feet in length, should have

exhibited no Hunnish tendencies, whereas my examples of the same species in a

sixteen-foot aviary behaved abominably.


To me there is nothing surprising in these facts : under different con¬

ditions birds of the same species often show different sides of their character, and

even under identical conditions individuals of a species often behave as diversely

as members of the human family. Undoubtedly in a large aviary, and par¬

ticularly when planted with shrubs and creepers, birds are less inclined to dispute

and can more easily avoid each other than in a smaller enclosure.



