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Zoological Society going to wake up to the fact that their Parrot

House is an objectionable place and unworthy of its occupants !

Considering how great and growing an interest is now taken by

so many in Parrots, foreign Finches (of which they have so

miserable a collection — presumably owing to want of space),

and other species now immured in the Parrot House, it seems

short sighted that they should be wasting their land and money

on other buildings (one looks like another feeding bar — as if

there were not too much of that sort of thing already) while so

many valuable birds are being ruined from want of proper

accommodation.



THE NIGHTINGALE IN LANCASHIRE.


By W. lyANDLESS.


No doubt the above heading will appear somewhat strange

to most people (dj, but to me it is one of the greatest pleasures

I have to hear my Nightingale singing his full wild song every

•day, the whole day long.


My first experience of these birds was about sixteen years

ago, when I heard one singing for the first time in its wild state ;

and I was so struck with the delightful music that I determined

to possess one for myself, with the result that I have kept a 'gale,

and sometimes two, ever}^ year since — of course taking fresh birds

•every year and liberating in the spring each bird that does not

turn out a songster.


I have tried hand-reared birds; and have also taken the

young, and captured the parent birds which have fed and reared

them ; and I have caught branchers in the autumn ; and all

liave turned out failures, never producing any more music

than you will hear from the 3^oung swallows when they are

perched on the eaves. But being no way disheartened by this

non-success, I determined to persevere, and am rewarded with

now hearing, in the midst of a Lancashire manufacturing town

in the months of March and April, the Nightingale singing

Tiis pure wild notes as well as ever he was heard in the Surrey or

Kentish dales in the middle of May.


No doubt the above statement will sound rather doubtful

to most people who have tried to keep these charming birds ; but

when I say that I have experimented with the Nightingale for

sixteen years, and have made that species a special study — being


(d) The Nig-htingrale is not found in its wild state in Lancashii-e — possibly some of

"Our south-county readers may not be aware of this fact. — IJd.



