Ill



ON THE MAKING OF AN AVIARY.


By the Rev. C. D. Farrar.


I have met people who possessed a “Crystal Palace Cage,”

who thought they had done all that could be recpiired in the way

of aviaries. Of such I will not stop to speak. By an aviary I

mean a fairly large enclosure where the birds have opportunity

to stretch their wings and maybe to nest.


Now, it by no means follows that because a man has

money and can put up such a place, that you would call him an

aviculturist. A man may have a big library, who never takes

down a book ; and a man may have a fine stud of horses, and

yet never ride. In the same way there are numbers of people

who tell me in confidence “that they love the dear birds, but”—

yes, there is always a ‘but,’—“the English climate is so detestable,

cold searching winds, black frosts, drenching showers,—render

for them aviaries impossible. There are others, again, for

whom “aviaries are too expensive,” and so they are obliged to

put up with cages.


The more I study things, and the longer I live, the more

clearly do I see that these persons do not really love birds at all ;

if they did they would overcome their difficulties, and with them

“ nothing would be impossible.”


A very decent aviary can be put up at a very trifling cost,

and as for climate—well, Yorkshire has samples of all sorts, and

yet I do fairly well with the dicky birds, in spite of the fact that

the air here is often what Hamlet calls “ nipping and eager.”


In building an aviary, it is not so much a cpiestion of

money as common sense; and I will always back the latter

commodity against the longest purse.


You must (i) Select a suitable spot. (2) You must arrange

the whole as much like nature as possible. (3) You must

lavish on your birds constant, personal, and untiring love.


Now, before trying to build, I should go and visit all the

aviaries within calling distance, and from the best points of each

I should construct my own. The one model I should severely

avoid is the Western aviary at the Zoo.


I11 this country of East winds and uncertain climate, we

are wont to exaggerate the delicacy of foreign birds, and in

countless cases the pursuit of aviculture is abandoned for want

of confidence in the ability of the birds to endure it. With a

southern aspect—because all birds love the sun—and protection



