Captivity vci'sus Freedom.


CAPTIVITY VERSUS FREEDOM.



293



I was much interested by Mr. Galloway’s article on “ The

Weather and our Summer Birds.” The part which specially took

my attention is his pronouncement in favour of captivity v.

freedom.


Mr. Hudson, if I recollect right, thinks captivity the

greatest misery a bird can endure. How birds regard it is,

like the question of food and temperature, one we have by 110

means found the answer to yet. My experience is almost entirely

confined to parrots.


As a rule you may always despair of getting back the

long-tailed parrots which escape—excepting Macaws—and you

may always hope to recover the short-tailed ones ; and the parrot

that does come back, as a rule, does not much appreciate liberty.

Their great desire to come back into the house, and the mischief

they may do, when they do get in, is one of the drawbacks to

letting them out. But the question of returning is not entirely

decided by their having or not having lost their fear of man. I

knew a Bengal Parrakeet so devoted to his owner that he felt he

might safely take it out of doors on his shoulder. It flew to the

top of a high tree, and nothing would persuade it to return that

day, and by the next morning it was gone never to be recovered.

But only let me find the short-tailed bird that has flown away,

and even if not very tame, he will probably come back to his

cage.


Macaws form the exception to the long-tails not coming

back, and Cockatoos form the exception to the short-tails coming

back, but I think more because they are so very strong on the

wing that they fly too far afield in the first instance. I knew a

Bullfinch, which was caught wild, and got away, and returned of

its own accord. But I have reared linnets by hand, and had them

tame enough at first to return to my whistle, but they very soon

lost their tameness and went for food. When I first came to this

Vicarage, some 34 years ago, I bought a Blackbird. All went

well, till I also bought a Magpie. It may have been coincidence,

but the Blackbird moped and seemed going to die, so I opened

its cage and gave it its liberty, Next day it returned of its own



