220



Correspondence, Notes, etc.



I commenced birds’-nesting (under my father’s guidance, who was

sportsman, field-naturalist, geologist and botanist) as soon as I could toddle

—more than half a century ago—-and bird-keeping not much later ; and

there is hardly an inland British bird with whose nests and eggs and

general habits I am not intimately acquainted. And I have had in captivity,

in my dining-room, in birdrooms, and in the garden (an open garden,

covered over with wire-netting, kept as natural as possible, but with various

artificial shelters), a vast number of different species from practically everj r

clime ; and as I watch them and their ways day by day, year in and year

out, I find it impossible to help feeling absolutely certain that birds, how¬

ever young and inexperienced, and with none of their own species about

them, have a strong natural inclination and impulse from within (call it

what you will) to court after the manner of their species and to construct

nests true to type ; and with me, in their first efforts, they have almost in¬

variably built normal nests as soon as they have been loosed into the garden,

although not always previously. And I also almost invariably find that,

sooner or later (some species learn readily, but others are remarkably

tenacious and conservative, and extraordinarily slow to depart from the

ways of their ancestors), after having been exposed to, and had nests

ruined by, cold and wet, and having found out the advantages of shelters

and cosy rain-proof nest-boxes, they have discarded (I do not say lost for

they sometimes revert to them) their original modes of nesting, though not

of courting, and have adapted themselves to the circumstances of their

surroundings. A nest suitable for a hot climate, built in a position which

would be proper in a country where sun, not rain, is the order of the day,

is usually quite out of place in an exposed aviary in the United Kingdom,

especially when we take into consideration that many of the birds them¬

selves are delicate and incapable of bearing cold and cold-wet.


More than five years ago, in a light and airy mood, and therefore all

the more valuable as being wholly unbiassed, I wrote Hozu the Birds learn ;

or. Nesting under Difficulties (Vol. III., p. 174), in which I gave the story of a

pair of Zebra Finches ( Tceniopygia castanotis), how they commenced by

building normal nests and ended by breeding in a sheltered box. One of the

curiosities of the story is that these birds commenced housekeeping in an

open, instead of in a domed nest after the manner of their kind as

previously exemplified in British aviaries and birdrooms. When I looked

over this account last night, I was much disturbed, for it seemed to be

opposed to my own opinions as expressed above. I forthwith consulted

Campbell’s Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds , published in 1901, long after

I had written my little article, in which I find, at page 484, “ They often

start laying as soon as the foundation of the nest is placed in position,

and keep on building and laying until both operations are finished ; ” and,

“Mr. Wells found a Wedgebill’s nest near our camp which had been appro¬

priated by a pair of these Finches. It contained one egg when first



