As regards food, the birds have the usual seeds : canary,

Italian and Indian millet, with the addition of hemp in the

larger aviary ; here also they like a little boiled apple, but the

small Waxbills will not touch it. Preserved yolk of egg mixed

with crushed broken biscuit and a little mawseed, given dry, is

much appreciated by all the birds ; also four kinds of grass

seed—meadow fescue, Timothy, Sutton’s dwarf perennial rye

grass, and plantain or rib grass. Mealworms, and a few soaked

ants’ eggs are given every day, though the smaller birds only

seem to. care for the former item. In summer, flowering grass,

chickweed, lettuce, and dandelion. In winter I have tried

different seeds sown in shallow pans, and given when the seed

has grown an inch or so high ; this way of supplying green

food is very useful when none can be had outside, and, being

grown in a pot, it is always clean, as the birds cannot drag it

about on the floor and soil it.


So far, they seem to prefer rape (summer) seedlings to

anything else, the Doves also being fond of the winter variety.

I have also tried canary, hemp, and millet, but have hardly

experimented long enough to say with certainty which the birds

like best. In summer I catch so many earwigs on my dahlias

(in inverted flower-pots half filled with crumpled brown paper)

that I am thinking of trying to preserve them in the manner

described by Dr. Greene, for winter use. The Indigo and

Pileated Finches are especially fond of them, and of beetles,

when they can get them.


In each aviary, a bunch of spray millet is hung from the

■ceiling, and a pot of grit, crushed egg-shell, and scraped cuttle¬

fish bone is alwa3 ? s on the floor. Large pieces of cuttlefish are

wired (a hole being pierced at each end) among the forked

branches ; at first I fastened them with string, but find that wire

keeps them much steadier, and, placed in this way, the birds

can get at the bone much better than when hanging from the

■end of a branch which swings away every time it is pecked at.

It is hard to say which of the birds is most interesting, for they

■each have their own small characteristics; but the hen Shama,

the Pileated Finches, Cordon Bleus, Lavender Finches, and the

tiny Passerine and dainty little Picui Doves, should certainly

have the first places.



