132



Foreign Doves at Liberty.



stone terrace in front of the house. After that he again disappeared,

but when in June I obtained a second lot of G. sviithi and put them

in a large glass aviary surrounded by high wire netting, he had joined

the newcomers within three days of their arrival. How he succeeded

in discovering his relations so quickly is rather a mystery to me, as

he could not possibly have seen them and was separated from them

by many obstacles. From that time on, he has been constantly in

evidence, but what will he the ultimate fate of the little flock time

alone can show.


In concluding an article dealing with the acclimatization of a

family of birds which includes among its British representatives such

a notorious evil doer as the common Woodpigeon, it may not be out

of place to say something in answer to the arguments of those people

who view with horror the introduction of exotic birds and regard it

as a certain menace to fruit-growing and agriculture. They point out

continually the disastrous results which have followed the introduc¬

tion of the Sparrow into America and the Starling into Australia and

appear to imagine that because British birds multiply abnormally in

foreign countries, therefore foreign birds will multiply abnormally in

Great Britain. The analogy is, I can confidently say, quite unsound

and their fears are not in the slightest degree likely to be justified.

Of the many species of foreign birds we keep, or have kept at liberty,

(most of which have been carefully chosen as being particularly likely

to establish themselves) one and only one, if certain eminently desir¬

able species of Waterfowl are excepted, has shown some promise of

becoming a truly wild bird, viz., the beautiful and harmless Hill Tit

(Liothrix leutea) or “ Pekin Robin.” Such an addition to the British

list, no one surely could find any objection to. All the rest — doves,

finches, parrakeets, etc . — must have artificial feeding throughout the

year, and even with this assistance, a maintenance of numbers and

not an annual increase is, as a rule, the most that can be expected.



