American Robin and Dhyal Bird.



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AMERICAN ROBIN ® DHYAL BIRD.


By Katharine Currey.


I happen to have an American Robin (Turdus migratorius)

and a Dhyal Bird (Copsychns saularis) and a very delightful couple

they are; so utterly different in nature, the best of friends when

each is in his home cage, singing to one another in melodious

strains, but enemies if one is loose, and flies up to the other’s cage.

They scream with rage, and there seems to be a good deal of jealousy

mixed with it, chiefly on the part of the one that is not loose. So

attached are they to their cages that it is safe to let each out in the

garden for a flight.


The Dhyal Bird, “ Dick,” loves to cling to the creepers on the

house and look for insects, but at the sight of the mealworm tub he

flies to it with a loud scream. There is a very large Rookery in

some old beeches overlooking the garden, and Dick imitates, or tries

to, the cawing of the Rooks, but it is a shrill scream with him. He

sings, too, very sweetly, in company with “Rob,” who is a beautiful

songster. He once flew far away into a hay field, but was easily

caught. The Ringdoves were the cause of this, for he has a great

dislike to Doves, and while loose in the verandah, hopping about

quietly, a Ringdove chanced to fly in, whereupon Rob rushed at it,

and chased it out of the garden away to some fields. The Dhyal

bird is the cleverest of all the birds I have ever kept—sharp as a

needle and very fond of a game of play, especially with a coloured

stone or bit of stuff. He is in perfect health, and has been out in

the garden in a lawn aviary every day and all day long this winter,

with the exception of two days, one of fog and the other a biting

east wind. He was very glad to get out again, and at once took a

‘ grass bath,’ sitting in the grass and fluttering his wings as if he

were bathing. He bathes in quite cold water, even after a frost.

Of the two, I should say Rob is the least hardy, but he splashes

into his cold bath every day, again and again, like a Thrush.


The birds in their lawn cages are visited by numbers of their

wild companions—Blackbirds, Thrushes, Robins, Chaffinches, Green¬

finches, Hedge-Sparrows, Wrens, Tits, and the wicked House- and

Tree Sparrows, who try to keep all other birds away. No birds are



