FEBRUARY 35 



Not only is it hardly possible to identify individual 

 birds in a state of freedom, but it is uncertain in what 

 measure the unnatural conditions of captivity may 

 shorten or prolong the span of life. I gave three 

 instances in which the ages of three birds of different 

 species had been ascertained two of them with absolute 

 accuracy. First, that of an erne or white-tailed eagle 

 (Haliaetus albicilla) which, taken from the eyrie on 

 Cairnsmore in Galloway in 1858, lived on a chain at 

 Cairnsmore House till it died in 1900, aged forty-two 

 years; second, that of Colonel Leith Hay's cockatoo, 

 which, taken from a rebel prince's palace during the 

 Indian Mutiny of 1857, died at Leith Hall, Aberdeen- 

 shire, in March 1908, aged fifty-one years, plus whatever 

 age it was when taken by the 93rd Highlanders with 

 other loot in the palace ; and third, that of three female 

 Canada geese (Bernicla Canadensis), brought as goslings 

 to the loch at Monreith in 1884, whereof two died in 

 the winter of 1912, the third surviving till 1916 when 

 it was aged two-and- thirty years. 



I have since received trustworthy particulars of a 

 fourth case. In 1889 Lady Seale of Wonaston Court, 

 Monmouth, bought a pair of birds called in the trade 

 seed-eaters or St. Helena singing finches (Serinus 

 ? hortulanus) : the hen-bird only survived a single yenr 

 of captivity, but the cock inhabited a small cage till 

 the autumn of 1911, having thus lived twenty-two years 

 in confinement. 



When one reflects on the ceaseless activity of almost 

 all birds and the vast spaces traversed by some of the 

 migratory species, the wonder is, not that the majority 



