44



Practical Bi rd - Keeping.



For a full account of what groups have been bred in captivity

and their incubation periods, &c., I may refer to my book “ The

World’s Birds.”


Among perching birds, these families which are called in the

less modem works “ Picarian ” (i.e. all perching birds other than

Passerines and Parrots have always been my favourites), and when

I went to India I was delighted with the commonness of Rollers,

Bee-eaters, Woodpeckers, and Barbets, and soon set to work to

acquire experience which might be of use to amateurs not so happily

■situated. I found that the young of that glorious creature the

Indian Roller (Coracias inclica )—always called Blue-Jay in India—

were quite easily reared on cut-up raw meat and cockroaches ; the

cockroaches were very satisfying, being of the great American kind

(.Periplaneta americana ) now thoroughly established in India. The

same food also suited adults, which I have successfully “ meated

off,” beginning with cockroaches with the heads pulled off, which

leaves them helpless but kicking, then going on to small dead fish

and shrimps, and finally proceeding to the raw meat.


Fish and shrimps are, of course, unnatural food for thorough

land birds like these, but they take the place of lizards and large

insects, and are suitable for all birds which eat these; Rollers

especially need something with hard parts in it, to form their pellets,

for like so many (though not all) insectivorous birds, they cast up

the hard parts of their food like birds of prey. Rollers are not at

all suited for cage-life — no birds which either sit still or fly are so,

unless very small—and if they have to be confined in a cage at all

this should be as long as possible and have only two perches, as

mentioned in my remarks on transport. In aviaries they are charm¬

ing, and the European species was bred successfully in 1901 by our

member Mr. St. Quintin, the young birds being reared at first on

insects, then on chopped-up raw rabbit (fur and all) and hard-

boiled egg, which was the usual food of the old birds.


Rollers will devour any small bird they can swallow, and I

have seen both the European and the Indian species at the Zoo

greedily gulp down lettuce in large pieces. Chopped lettuce should

therefore be supplied, and it is as well to dilute, as it were, chopped

raw meat with biscuit-meal or dry-boiled rice. Suitable companions



