THE



159



Hvtcultural fllbagastne,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



New Series. —VOL. IV. — No. 5 .—All rights reserved. MARCH, 1906.



AVIARY EXPERIENCES IN 1905.


By A. G. Butler, Ph.D.


From time to time members have recorded their successes

and failures in breeding birds in the pages of our Magazine, and

have expressed a wish that others would do the same ; and

although, in consequence of the fact that eight of my smallish

aviaries are indoors, and not kept at a high temperature, my

successes have been few and generally not remarkable, those who

are not blessed with numerous or large wild out-door aviaries

may probably be interested even in my failures.


At the beginning of the year I had two Doves sitting in

my indoor aviaries—Wells’ Ground-Dove in one of the covered

aviaries looking upon my back garden, and a Barbary Dove in

one of the small aviaries behind my bird-room; both were

paired to Necklaced Doves. That with the Wells’ Dove

ignored her, and I exchanged him first for a cock white

Barbary and later for a hybrid Necklace + Barbary cock, but she

has never laid one fertile egg. If I could by any means have

secured a cock Wells’ Dove, I should, without question, have

had a large family of this species, inasmuch as the indefatigable

creature has laid between three and four eggs every month, sitting

by herself the full time upon all which she has not broken.


In the case of the Barbary-Necklaced hybrids, as I have

already recorded, the first four nests produced one young one

apiece ; after which two nests failed, and I replaced the Necklaced

Dove by a cock Senegal, who simply ignored the white Barbary;

nesting therefore came to an end in that aviary.


On the 25th March I purchased a pair of Wonga-Wonga



