i86



Correspondence, Notes, etc.



My good friend Dr. A. G. Butler seems to agree with me on the whole.

I do not quite participate his views about the importance of temperature.

In the case of small exotic birds, I have found that if we arrange artificial

light in such a way that birds can always feed twelve hours a day, it is of

secondary importance whether the temperature sinks occasionally to 45 0

or is kept steadily at 6o° F. In nature the fluctuations are greater, but in

the tropics small birds have not to endure 18 hours night and fast as they

have to endure in winter in our latitude. I have been preaching this

very simple fact for more than twenty-five years, but some private bird

owners still kill their pets by kindness in covering up their cages, and

Zoological Gardens seem slow to realise the importance of prolonging the

short duration of small birds’ feeding time in winter. Birds of the size of

Thrushes, Starlings, Parrakeets and upwards have sufficient stamina to

endure a longer fast than small birds.


Inner cages opening into open-air ones have great drawbacks. These

are briefly draughts which are most detrimental, the free play of mice, and

the natural habit of birds dodging out when they are looked for inside, or—

in to the interior when we wish to see them in the open. The most fatal

objection is that from the inside we cannot see the birds at all, because the

latter being between the spectator and the light only the outline will be

visible.


With all that Dr. Greene says I cordially agree. Breeding small birds

in a Zoo. should be a lucky and interesting occurrence, but not of prime

importance, however, it should not be rendered impossible, nor should it be

rendered quite hopeless if attempted by the birds.


Small foreign birds should, in my opinion, be seen at the Zoo. in such

cages and conditions as a genuine lover of birds can imitate at home with

advantage to the birds and benefit to the popular knowledge of birds.


Mr. Frank Finn is the last of my friends the critics, whose writing I

propose to answer. He says that it is quite possible to exclude mice and

rats from aviaries. If he will show the way to do it he will deserve very

great thanks from many people. But I think he will find that what he says

is easier said than done.


I was indeed astonished to see him write such a sentence as—“nor

would any practical aviculturist group his birds so carelessly as to mix the

dangerous with the harmless.” Does he mean to classify the birds into

two clearly divided sorts of dangerous and harmless ? like a very young

authoress paints the characters in her first novel as all black or impossibly

good and white. Very many otherwise harmless birds become at some

season in the year absolutely dangerous to other birds of their own size and

strength.


It is of no little use talking of removing every unsuitable bird from

an aviary like the Canal Bank or the Parrot House. The Crows could be

caught because they are not very agile, but the larger Parrots, which climb



