143



Correspondence , Notes, etc.



a smile when I think of the delight my tiniest birds display as I open the

window and let them rush from birdroom to garden like so many children

scampering ont of school.


Mr. Wiener would have ns believe that birds in aviaries are short¬

lived. That is not my experience. His own success with birds in cages

does not seem to have been very marked ; he tells us that “ small finches

have been known to live six and eight years in cages.” Some of us I fancy

will regard that as a rather poor record.


There are some excellent traps and contrivances for catching birds in

an aviary without injuring them ; it is a matter of patience and intelligence.

Sick birds can usually be caught up only too easily.


If we are to bring Mr. Wiener’s arguments to a logical conclusion, all

of our birds should be caught up and caged. Fancy all the birds in the

Western Aviaries being caged in pairs (?) and stacked in rows! What a

delight to the visitors! What an increase to the staff would be needed!

Birds in an aviary give wonderfully little trouble compared with the same

birds caged. The latter require incessant care and attention, and their true

nature is never seen. And as to the rarer species of which only single

specimens can be obtained, and the widowers—what is to be done with

them ?


It is curious that Mr. Wiener should have omitted to mention a very

serious drawback to a large exposed natural aviary. In a cold wet summer,

one conies across a delicate species now and then which seems to be unable

to produce a fertile egg. This may have been the fault of an individual

specimen; but one or two cases I think I have rightly attributed to the

cold. Again, I have had several species which have been perfectly success¬

ful up to the time of the young leaving the nest, but, as braucliers, the

young have been quite unable to stand the cold and wet—for they keep to

the trees—and many died. With such species, aviaries built on the prin¬

ciple of the Western Aviaries would be preferable.


Speaking generally, if in their future home the small foreign birds

are confined in cages, the movement will be a retrograde one unworthy of

the Society. Rather let the new House be constructed on the plan of the

Western Aviaries, but with admission for the public both to front and rear as

in some of the other houses. Let the outside flight be as natural as

possible, with grass * gravel trees and shrubs, and the inside as snug as you

like and as light as possible. Dead leafless trees (not evergreens), in pots or

otherwise, should be placed in the inner part, and, as a rule, nesting boxes



* Grass and rape seed in the spring and summer, and wheat nearly all the year

round, may be sown in the open part of the aviary with advantage. Two or three plots,

renewed in succession as required, will furnish a supply of green food during the greater

part of the year, and largely contribute towards the health and happiness of the birds.

Do not forget that it is the cage not the aviary bird that so often dies from the effects of

eating green food.—R. P.



