38 



CHAPTER VI. 



NEST-BOXES AND OTHER APPLIANCES. 



In following out the plan of our work, we purpose dealing with the appliances belonging to the 

 bird-room as occasions for their use may present themselves. We shall do this with the view of 

 not tiring the reader with too much dry, but necessary detail all in one place. We have built our 

 cage and fitted it with the three absolute necessaries, and now proceed to hang it up or place it 

 against the wall in some way. There are more ways than one. Perhaps, instead of a single 

 cage, it may be a four or six-couple, and it may be proposed to stand it on a small table, with 

 drawers for seed and tins, and all kinds of neat little arrangements. It is difficult to disabuse 

 any one of the idea that such things are dangerous articles in the bird-room. We do not object to 

 them in the breakfast-room or library, or in any room into which the idea of furniture enters as an 

 element — and we have seen very handsome mahogany-fronted cages designed for this purpose — but 

 table-legs in a bird-room are so suggestive of staircases for mice. If the cage be large and cannot 

 safely be suspended, but must be propped up in some way, make the supports as few as possible ; 

 and plant on the top of each support an inverted meat-tin, how to get over which is a problem 

 on which the minds of ingenious mice have hitherto been much exercised without arriving at 

 any satisfactory conclusion. The most convenient plan is to hang the two-couple cages against 

 the wall, almost as closely as if built in a stack. There had better be a small space left 

 between each, if it can be done ; because, if insects should get into them, they will lodge 

 permanently between the top of one cage and the bottom of the next, if the one is used as a 

 support for the other. Further, it will be found that it is better to suspend the cages on nails 

 passing through holes in the inside, than through metal eyes attached to the outside, as the nails 

 of one cage in the latter case interfere with the hanging of another. Occasionally the way in 

 which a wall is built entirely precludes the adoption of this system of hanging, and the bottom 

 row has to carry the entire superstructure, but it can generally be managed on a brick partition 

 by pricking for the joints, and each cage hung literally on its own hook, not less than from two 

 to three feet from the floor. The wisdom of adopting uniformity in size and arrangement of 

 parts will now be apparent to the fancier as he sits down to take stock of his work : seed-hoppers 

 will be seen to be in rows, one above the other, and the same with the water-tins, and apart 

 from the pleasing effect to the eye, the convenience of the whole will manifest itself to him in 

 many ways, the value of which he will fully recognise. 



We might have referred at an earlier stage of the proceedings to the whitewashing which the 

 cages must undergo, but as it requires to be done twice in the year, viz., at the commencement and 

 close of each breeding season, and has then to be managed through the door, we have completed 

 our cage before mentioning it. The brush which has done duty for ourselves for a good many 

 years is a common paint-brush of medium size, with the handle shortened to three or four inches, 

 Mix ordinary whiting to the consistency of thick cream with thin flour-and-water paste. If the 

 whiting be first mixed into a paste, and the liquid be added when boiling, it will work up into a 

 veiy smooth compound which can be laid on with a finish almost equal to paint, and, when dry 



