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Dr. L. Lovell-Keays



nights to train the birds to go in—never more. “ Your birds must

be very wonderful,” you say ; until you see this aviary and then you

realise that when driven the birds must go in, because birds when

frightened always fly to the top, and birds when driven always fly

away from the driver. Ergo, if the entrance to the shelter is at the

very top of the flight and in one corner, the birds have nowhere

else to go. I have tried to drive birds in in other aviaries, and when

thoroughly exasperated given it up as a bad job.


In another aviary the flight is 8 feet high, and the shelter

slopes down from a wall towards the flight and is only 6 feet 6 inches

in height. The consequence is that the wire work has to be carried

up from the top of the shelter to the level of the flight, and although

this slopes it makes no difference, and when I drive or attempt to

drive the birds in they merely cling to the wire-netting. It is only

a little point, but it becomes important if you want to catch a bird

up or to drive them in in very bad weather, and so on; and to my

mind an aviary in which you cannot easily drive the birds in is

not perfect.


As regards the floor of the shelter, I need hardly say that a

cement floor well covered with sand is to be infinitely preferred to

the ordinary earth or even brick floor, and where the extra cost

is not of great moment, there should be no corners, but the floor

should be sharply curved at the junction with the walls. This

is the only way you can be sure of keeping your shelter free from

dirt and its attendant satellite disease. The further advantage of

cement floors is that you can exclude mice. It should not be

within the province of this paper to warn my readers against the

evils of draughts. And yet I have seen aviaries where one can see

daylight at the eaves. Birds will roost in the eaves ; often people

wonder that their birds get pneumonia, or in bad cases, won’t use

the shelter at all. I encourage the birds to use the shelters for

feeding in and nesting in. How often do we hear of nestlings being

drowned out. But en passant, let me make a suggestion. In the

inner flight, when you are expecting young to leave the nest, get

some nice leafy boughs and put them in the flight several days

before the young are expected. By that time the old birds will have

got used to the presence of these boughs and have lost their inquisi-



