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like to make their rough little nests themselves, often on strange

and dangerous ledges, and I find it useless to give them the

elaborate nests of other birds. If once they go to nest they

almost invariably sit well, hatch out their eggs and duly

feed their young for about twelve days ; then they go to nest

again, the young are neglected, become weak in the legs, and

die just before they should feed themselves.


Of the hardihood of this Dove I have had some personal

experience. It is curious how the naturalists of fifty years and

even twenty-five years ago thought that every bird which comes

from an ordinarily hot climate must necessarily require similar

heat at all times of the year to thrive. Dixon wrote, about 1850,

of this Diamond Dove, “One elegant little Dove found by the

same explorers in the same heated deserts, can hardly be got

through a British winter in a snug cage in a warm room.” I

kept a cock through three bitter winters in an unheated outdoor

aviary ; though I must confess that his hen died on a day of

memorable cold. I regretted the experiment, though this little

cock always looked the pidture of health and happiness; now all

my small Doves go out of doors in May, and in October migrate

back to large cages in a fairly cool bird-room. Many little

Doves, which for years have borne the cold well, show signs of

feeling it in old age and should be treated according^.


I feed them all chiefly on canary seed with a little white

millet, and hemp occasionally in winter. The flight of the

Diamond Dove is most elegant and rapid, and I must warn

aviculturists that they have a wonderful knack of darting out

over one’s head as one enters the aviary. They have, however,

strong homing instindts, and I have hardly ever failed eventually

to recover an escaped Dove.


Within the last few days I procured a fresh pair of

Diamond Doves. They had been kept for some time in a cage, and

when they arrived at midday, were stiff, and, when I put them

into an aviary, could not fly up ; in two hours they had regained

the use of their wings, and by 6 p.m., as I went carelessly into

the aviary, the cock darted over my head like an arrow into some

tall willows far below. It was doubtless his first flight since the

days of his liberty in Australia, so I gave him up for lost, and

was really too busy to watch him. Still he stayed about; was

seen the next day on a sunny bank among dry grass, and within

forty-eight hours from his escape, returned close to the aviary in

which he had not been six hours, and almost at once went into a

cage brought for him ! . Of course, when the land or houses of



