324 Correspondence.


CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.



WINTER TREATMENT OF FOREIGN BIRDS.


g IR; —i was interested to read Mr. Shore Bailey’s remarks on my humble

efforts at writing. He is, I know, quite right. It is the relative proportion of

cover in the flight and shelter that determines a bird’s choice of a roosting-

place. I discovered that soon after writing the article. But so many avicul-

turists have found the same difficulty, and perhaps here is the solution, or

partial solution, at any rate.


There is another point I should like to refer to and that is apropos of


catching mice. Last winter and spring I caught very nearly 250 , and to the


best of my knowledge and belief entirely cleared some of my aviaries of mice.

I used the ordinary break-neck traps baited with cheese and I have never ex¬

perienced the smallest difficulty in catching them. To protect the traps I used

to put a box over them with half an inch cut off two opposite ends so that mice

could run in and out. Then place three or four traps under the box and where


the mice run and you cannot help catching them. I have caught fifteen in one


night, and for weeks I averaged six or eight. In a month’s time I had for all

intents and purposes exterminated the little beasts. I don’t doubt I have a few

now, but I am quite sure not many. If I see any signs I at once lay a trap and

almost invariably succeed in catching my friend the first night. I had two

disasters,—both due to insufficient care, one was a cock firefinch and the

other a hen reedling. L. LOVELL-KEAYS.


P.S.—My Zoster ops viridis are now feeding their third nest of young,

2 nd July.


PARRAKEETS NESTING IN A STATE OF LIBERTY.


SlR ) —In answer to Mr. Le Souef, I should rather like to say that my

parrakeets did not appear to fight for nesting places, as the majority of fatal

battles took place at a distance from the most favoured breeding resort of the

combatants ; birds were sometimes killed out of the breeding season altogether.

The fact that I kept birds together which may not meet in a wild state might

have had something to do with it, for it used to be members of different species,

not of the same species, which killed one another. I am also tempted to think

that the birds were so quarrelsome, not because they were overcrowded, but for

the opposite reason, because they were comparatively few. It certainly seems to

be the case that members of certain pugnacious species of birds and beasts fight

less savagely, when, from natural or artificial causes, they are compelled to see a

great deal of their rivals, without, however, being in so confined a space that

they are able to overtake and kill them. The mute swan, for example, is seldom

satisfied with less than a mile of river or a whole lake when he and his mate are

thinking of a nest and all rivals are either killed or driven away. But at

Abbotsbury, where hundreds of swans are kept together, you may see them


nesting within a few yards of each other in comparative amity.


TAVISTOCK.



