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birds in captivity. I have tried old birds, young birds, and

even hand-reared birds, but I have never been able to get them

through the moult, although I have had several that seemed

outwardly quite reconciled to cage life, and that would feed

from the hand. When one considers how a Swallow sustains

itself in a state of Nature, namely, by taking innumerable

infinitesimal insects on the wing, at the cost of incessant

exercise, and contrasts this with the way it must, perforce, be

fed in a cage by having a portion of “ food ” (mostly a stodgy

mixture of indigestible rubbish, or, at the best, only a few

coarse insects and mealworms) dumped down before it daily

(perchance, if its owner is specially attentive, twice daily) to

eat or leave as it may, it is very easy to understand the utter

impossibility of keeping these birds in cages.


If we admit not only the difficulty, but practically the

impossibility of keeping English Kingfishers and Swallows in

cages it will be all the more curious to note that there are

Australian representatives of very similar birds which are quite

easy to keep in health and beauty in a cage. I refer to the

Sacred Kingfisher and the Wood-Swallows, or, more properly,

the Wood-Swallow Shrikes. True, neither of these belongs

respectively to the same genus as the English bird, the Sacred

Kingfisher being Halcyon sancta, while the English Kingfisher

is of course Alcedo ispida , and the Wood-Swallow Shrikes are

Artami of various kinds, our Swallow being of the Hirundo

family. After the very interesting article upon the Sacred

Kingfisher by Mr. Seth-Smith in the April number of the

“Avicultural Magazine” I feel that I cannot add anything in

respect of these birds, especially as I have not been so fortunate

with my pair as Mr. Seth-Smith has been with his. The Wood-

Swallow Shrikes, however, have so many characteristics of our

own Summer visitor Hirundo rustica that I may be excused

for having made mention of the latter as an introduction to the

following lines upon my experience of the former as cage birds.


Unless the Zoological Society has acquired specimens

since its list published in 1896 the Artamus genus has only

been represented by A. siiperciliosus, the White-eyebrowed

Wood Swallow Shrike. A pair of these appear to have been

presented to the Society in 1S66 by the Acclimatization Society

of Melbourne. A pair is scheduled as “ Bred in the Gardens,

1870,” evidently from the 1866 birds, and a fifth specimen

was “ Purchased 1875.”


Besides Artamus superciliosus, several species of the



