My Birds at Brinsop Court.



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which can be washed down, and keeps beautifully sweet and clean.

Roomy shelves go round two sides for cages, and strong hooks for

the same hang on the walls. Large cupboards for food, etc., are at

one end, and at the other a sink of white porcelain, with sloping

grooved shelves adjoining it, over which are shelves with perforated

zinc, on which sponges, empty baths, etc., are stored. The walls

are of enamel paint of duck-egg green, and everything is as sanitary

and clean as is possible.


I use sawdust for most of the cages, putting a little grit in a

glass feeder. The seed-eaters have large bunches of all kinds of

green food, which grows in abundance in the fertile red sandstone

soil of Herefordshire. When I received the pair of Red-headed

Bullfinches (they might have been called orange-headed!) their

delight was great when I almost filled their cage with a bunch of

flowering grasses, chickweed, wild cress, groundsel and Shepherd’s

purse; they dived in amongst it, nibbling with little piping notes of

pleasure.


One of the delights of receiving freshly-imported birds is to

feel what joy one gives them after their long voyage, and to see

them improving daily. One of the sorrows is when they arrive too

late, moving on to an unseen plane. I don’t mind birds coming

with shabby and immature plumage, so long as they will but move

for it is so interesting to watch them moult, emerging from dull

chrysalises, as it were, into fine butterflies. I think the water here

has iron in it, which no doubt is beneficial, for some waters must

be better for birds than others, and here it comes from beautiful

springs. (To be continued).



REVIEW.


FIELD-STUDIES OF SOME RARER BRITISH BIRDS.


Field-Studies of Some Rarer British Birds. — By John Walpole-Bond

(London : Witherby & Co., 1914). 7s. 6d. net.


Let those who are interested in such birds as Dartford

Warblers and the Woodlark, the Kite, the Hobby, etc., obtain this

book. It is the result of first-hand information, of close and careful

observation, of very keen interest in several species of birds, some of



