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but a few weeks later, when I found myself constrained to take

up the Secretaryship of the Avicultural Society.


I had prepared a cage in my dining-room, 6 ft. long by

2 ft. by 2 ft., and had arranged the perches as best I knew how

for the reception of the Bee-eaters, the open food saucers being

placed on two little tables which raised them to the level of the

lowest perch, which ran parallel with them along the lightest

end of the cage, a few inches above the ground. In theory,

the arrangements were perfect, but they did not work out

properly in practice. The birds cuddled together on a high

perch, and never budged an inch, and to save them from

starvation I tried to hand-feed them. They were ravenously

hungry, and pecked wildly at what I offered, but seemed quite

unable to take the food from my fingers, and eventually became

discouraged and gave it up. To make a long story short, I

discovered two points about them for which I was totally un¬

prepared. I found that, accustomed as a species to the intense

glare of an African sun, they could not see except in a very

good light—which was decidedly encouraging when I thought of

the fogs and general gloom of a London winter. For years the

cage had been standing on the side of a large bay window, in

excellent light for London, and birds of many kinds had

approved of the position. The new tenants, however, could not

see to move about, much less to take food, and there was

nothing for it but to swing the cage round so as to bring it

nearly across the front of the window—an excellent arrangement

for the birds, but one which so darkened the room (for there was

another cage of the same superficial dimensions, but loftier, on

the top of the Bee-eaters’) that I and my birds, Bee-eaters and

all, would have found ourselves in a warm corner if the Queen

of the Establishment were not exceptionally amiable, and as

keen an aviculturist as myself. Even with the cage in this

unexceptionable position, on the bright mornings, they would

not venture down to the food dishes until after 9 o’clock, and on

dull days not till later ; and in the afternoons, after having been

caught a few times by evening gloom before they were safe in

bed, they stopped feeding about 2 o’clock. Three powerful

hurricane lamps did not seem to aid them in the least; so that

for a good part of the winter, during which they were slowly

moulting, I could rarely get them to feed as much as 5-6 hours-

out of the twenty-four, a most unsatisfactory state of affairs.

Their great terror in the afternoon was lest they should be

caught by the dark ; and, although I would lift them down to-



