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MIGRATORY BIRDS.


By Charles T. Rothera, B.A.


Probably nothing in the whole range of natural history is-

more wonderful, or requires still further elucidation, than the

subjedt of the migration of birds. But it is not so much to the

questions of the overpowering impulse that seizes our feathered

visitors at definite periods, nor the amazing powers of flight they

display, nor the prodigious rate at which their long journeys are

performed that I propose to refer, but rather to relate my

experience with some of them as inmates of the out-door aviary

I described in the Magazine for last November, and so to touch

on the general question of acclimatization.


The first migratory bird I tried to keep was one of the

White-throats. I caught it in a snap cage in my garden in the

late summer, and in the hope of catching another I kept it for

several days in the lower portion of the cage and fed it frequently

with small green caterpillars’ from the geraniums, but no other

bird was decoyed to the trap, and ultimately I removed the

captive to the aviary where it lived peaceably with the small

foreigners. Here it was fed on insectivorous food and got its

share with the Tits of ant’s eggs and mealworms. The ensuing

winter and spring were of quite average severity and dulness,

with a good deal of frosty fog and rime, but my little friend

shewed no signs of discomfort and was conspicuous among the

briskest and sleekest of the birds in the section until early autumn

when it died.


My next experience was with a hen Nightingale, the survivor

of a pair of which the cock was killed by a Nuthatch. I found it

necessary to part the two birds, which were hand-reared from the

same nest, because one persistently drove the other from the food

and would soon have caused its death by starvation, and the hen

was put with the little foreigners. She behaved just like the

White-throat, lived on the same kind of food with the addition

of some finely chopped raw meat, and was so tame that she

would run up to the keeper and take food, especially a meal¬

worm, from his fingers. She got through the spring moult with¬

out difficulty, but died in the autumn.


A Ray’s Wagtail lived a long way into the winter, but did

not get quite through, and Wheatears I have never been able to

keep from one year to another. Meadow Pipits reared by hand

from the nest survive the winter without any trouble or extra

attention.



