290



Dr. A. G. Butler,



THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF AVICULTURE.


By Dr. A. G. Butler.


(Continued from page 27S).


Larks are sobrely-coloured birds, the Shore-larks being the

most attractive in colouring, but everybody with any appreciation of

music loves them. I have hand-reared a fair number of the European

Skylark, and one winter when the snow was thick on the ground

and birds were starving to death in thousands, my man (I had one

then to help me in cleaning up cages and aviaries and giving fresh

w T ater) took out my nets'" and brought me home thirteen: I kept

the three best and they made grand songsters : I have tried these

birds both in cage and aviary and certainly they sing better in the

former than the latter. I have at various times bought Skylarks

from the catchers, but I am not sure that I don’t prefer to hear them

singing from the sky rather than from a cage : I don’t believe for a

moment that they are unhappy provided that they have room to run

about, a nice fresh turf, and a good bed of sand to dust themselves

in, with the proper food ; and as to reducing the number of Larks

by catching a few, one might as well talk of reducing the sand of

the seashore by taking home a handful. Larks are hardy and long-

lived when properly cared for, and they soon become wonderfully

tame ; they are quarrelsome if two birds are kept together with

space to fight in.


I have had one or two Wood-larks, but did not care for them

so much as for the Skylark ; they sang less often and the per¬

formance was inferior to that which I have heard when produced

by birds at liberty : seeing that they spend much time on perches in

the day, I was at first surprised to discover that they always roosted

on the floor of the cage at night ; but the Alaudidce, as a family,

are certainly more terrestrial than arboreal in their habits. The

species which pleased me most was a fine Mongolian Lark given to

me by Mr. Abrahams about 1891 ; it was a grand songster and

wonderfully tame ; it always completed its song by mewing like a


*They are used now for protecting a cherry tree from Blackbirds, but they

are getting very rotten.



