7i



Rufous-neck (Hyphantornis cucullataj. The last is a big restless

bird with a murderous looking beak exactly like the pick end of

my Chamonix ice-axe, and evil looking red eyes. I kept it

twelve months before summoning courage to trust it with the

smaller birds. However, beyond elbowing a bird now and then

off a perch it fancies, it has never done any harm, but my

experience is, of course, confined to tlie one specimen. Its

greediness after mealworms and flies is its greatest drawback.

I am simply obliged to scatter ten mealworms over the tray

to give the Madagascar a chance of one.


One of the White Javas is the pest of the establishment.

It lives on the top of a Hartz cage hung up in one corner and

viciously attacks every other bird who attempts to alight on it,

including the Hyphantornis. The latter weaves thick arches

and bowers of the long tough flowering grasses with which I

feed them in summer. Mr. Savage says he has not heard a sound

from his Napoleon. I have one equally silent which also

never weaves, but it has come regularly into brilliant plumage

for five years. Another one, which assumes only a dingy yellow

and black, makes a noise like shaking a heavy chain up and down

in a sack, accompanied by a humming noise in its throat, and

weaves every bit of grass into the cage wires. On our late

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Day it festooned three reels of

coloured sewing silks all over the Dome of a large Crystal

Palace cage, with a perfect rosette of crimson silk on an apple

branch.


I find the Madagascar never colours below the chest

unless it has frequent mealworms and soft food some time before

and during the moult, and also often Parrish’s food in the water

for the sake of the phosphate of iron, when it will colour right

down to the legs.


I would like to add, in conclusion, that after a trial of six

winters, during two of which I have done without any heat in

the bird-room, I am convinced that, for a mixed collection in

cas.cs , the temperature should never remain below 48 deg. or

50 deg. Falir. ; for although my Weavers, many of the Waxbills,

Love-birds, Combassou. and Blue-Mountain Lories seem

indifferent to a dry atmosphere 10 degrees lower, yet some of the

others appear to suffer more or less, and the first night of sudden

keen frost last November killed a thoroughly healthy acclimatized

Cordon Bleu, the thermometer registering 38 deg. Falir. I use

Clarke’s Atmospheric Syphon Gas Stove, recommended by Mr.

Fillmer, turned as low as it will burn. The objectionable



