Correspondence, Notes , etc.



251



Perhaps some of our Members will give us the benefit of their

experiences on the points raised by Mr. Gibbins.


Reginald Phieeipps.


The following, extracted from the Proceedings of the Zoological

Society of London, 1851, pp. 196-7, is stated by Mr. Frank Finn to be the

earliest recorded case of the Nightingale breeding in captivity.


OBSERVATIONS ON THE BREEDING OF THE

NIGHTINGALE IN CAPTIVITY.


BY H. HANEEY, SERGT.-MAJOR 1st LIFE GUARDS.


Being of opinion that any bird which breeds in this country in a wild

state might, by studying its habits, be brought to do so in a state of

captivitj - , I made preparations during the winter of 1844 for trying the

Nightingale, which I considered to be the most retired in its habits of any

of our summer visitants. I had a cage made, four feet long by three feet

high, the back, ends and top solid, with a wire front, in which I placed a small

Scotch fir-tree, planted in a flower-pot ; to each end of the cage I attached

a common-sized Canary’s breeding-cage, communicating with the large

cage by a hole about four inches square. I broke a new birch-broom and

filled up the cages at each end, to make them resemble, as near as posible,

the bottom of a thick hedge, and then put in a plentiful supply of withered

oak-leaves and moss, of which the Nightingale forms its nest, covering the

fronts of the two small cages with green glazed calico. I placed the cages

high up against a wall facing a landing-window.


The following spring, that is, about the latter end of April, 1845, I

directed a bird-catcher (Blake, of Johu-street, Totteuham-court-road), who

goes to Watford every season to catch Nightingales, to bring a cock and

hen bird which had paired naturally; he did so, and, fortunately, they

meated off very readily. By “ meatiug off,” I mean that such birds as live

on insect food will not peck at dead food until taught to do so, which is

effected by enclosing meal-worms in a small glass tube, corked up at each

end, and then placing the tube in their food; on pecking at the worm the

beak slips off the glass amidst the food, which they swallow, and will

afterwards go to it without the aid of a tube. On finding my birds feed

freely in the small cage, in which until then I had confined them, I turned

them into the place I had fitted up for them, and was much gratified, about

a week afterwards, to observe the hen bird flying about with an oak-leaf in

her beak. She made her nest in one of the small cages at the end of the

large one, laid four eggs, of which she hatched and brought up three

young ones. During the time she was sitting, the cock sang as well and

as loud as I ever heard one in a wild state : when the young were excluded*



“Ejected” from the eggs.—R. P.



