228



Thirty-two Years of Aviculture.



male of the much rarer Red-crested finch, of which I imported three

males. These birds are innocent, pretty, but not otherwise inter¬

esting ; they seem to have no song, only call-notes. Of Cardinal

Buntings I have had a pair of the Green Cardinal which reared one

young one (the latter, however, dying before its moult), five Yellow¬

billed, two pairs of Red-headed and a good many Red-crested Car¬

dinals ; though powerful, they are not aggressive birds ; but their

songs (in spite of Hudson’s praise of them) are nerve-wracking and

cause sensitive persons to clap their hands over their ears. I have

had three cocks, but no hens, of the Virginian Cardinal (or Cardinal

■Grosbeak) : it is a lovely bird with a powerful, though somewhat

monotonous, song ; it must be kept cool if it is to live any length of

time in captivity ; cold it does not object to in the least, but great

heat speedily kills it; I lost my last two males from heat-apoplexy :

I foolishly kept them in flight-cages on a sunny shelf. Unlike the

Bunting Cardinals, this species should not be trusted with small and

weak associates.


I have kept plenty of Greenfinches, caught in my garden ;

one of them was a superbly coloured bird and had a song equal to

that of a Norwich Canary, but of course with the hideous terminal

note of defiance. I fancy, from its tameness when first caged, that

this must have been an escaped cage-bird ; but I have not found

Greenfinches at any time very wild, and in an aviary they settle

down at once : this however may be due to the fact that they had

not previously been kept for days or weeks in small cages and foul

air ; for a pair of Goldfinches, turned out the day they were caught,

were equally tame. I bought a common Hawfinch from a bird-

catcher ; but, unlike the Greenfinch, it resented captivity greatly,

and did not live very long : I consider it the least attractive in every

respect of all the British finches.


A Tropical Seed-finch, given to me by Mr. Harper in 1907,

lived an uneventful life in a flight cage until early in 1912. Of the

species of Spermophila, or Sporophila, as Ridgway more correctly

calls it (the name Spermophilus having been previously used) I have

kept the White-throated, Lavender-backed, Fire-red, Reddish, Bluish,

Guttural, Black-headed Lined, and Lined Finches : they are delight¬

ful little birds, some of them with pretty songs and, with the ex-



