4 
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MY FOREIGN DOVES AND PIGEONS. 
another can be heating on the stove, and so a 
continual supply of warmth be kept up. Another 
advantage is that the heat keeps my food stuffs dry 
and wholesome, for a wooden building is not the 
best of keeping places in winter, and as I also 
keep my dogs’ food in sacks in the aviary passage 
it is very important it is free from damp. 
There are shelves covered with a curtain in the 
passage as well as in the seed room; and a broad 
shelf high up right across one end. All spare 
perches, cloths, heather for nesting, nesting tins, 
etc., are kept on these, and hooks are screwed into 
the roof for spare cages to hang from. A writing- 
desk, fixed on an iron bracket stands under one 
window, and here I keep my collection of feathers 
and the medals my birds have won for me at 
different times, also the large printed labels for 
putting on the boxes of birds going away. There 
are so many things one needs in an aviary, and, if 
possible, each should have its own particular place 
where it can always be found. 
When first I built this aviary, with the exception 
of one let-out cage, all cages in the passage had 
to stand on the floor or hang from the roof, and I 
soon found this very inconvenient, so I adopted the 
same plan as I had done in No. 2 aviarv, and let out 
some more cages in the walls. On the north side 
my little flying squirrels have three large cages 
opening into each other by sliding doors, that can 
be worked from the outside. Below one of these 
again is a spare cage, and underneath another is a 
large cupboard I use for storing sand. At the 
western end of the passage is another cage (let out 
into the little aviary at the end) where lives my 
white Chipping squirrel, ‘‘Anthony,’’ and on the 
other side of the passage are two more very large 
cages (let out into the shelters of Divisions 2 and 
3), below these two last are store places—as I did 
not care to bring the cages right down to the floor 
—each large enough to hold several sacks of food. 
In one I keep my dogs’ biscuits, in the other 
bags of acorns, beech and other nuts for the 
squirrels. Besides my American Flying squirrels 
and the Chipping squirrel J have two Tasmanian 
phalangers, or Sugar Squirrels, and most of these 
live in the passage cages. The fronts of all the 
cages (but one) face the passage, and look rather 
nice, besides, as most of them have glass (wired) 
windows let into them, they make the passage 
much lighter than it would otherwise be without 
them. 
The five jJoors opening into the front divisions 
are all of wood and wire, three open into the 
passage, and those at the extreme ends into the 
seed room and little extra aviary. \s I have 
already told you the first portion of these divisions 
consists of a shelter; these shelters are a good 
height, for they come under the centre of the roof, 
and here the aviary is 11 ft. high, whereas it slopes 
down to 63 ft. at the ridge. The shelters have 
each a window. In the three centre ones this 
window is in the front part, in the two outer ones 
at the ends. The shelters have wood and wire 
doors leading into the flights, and fitting on to the 
wire centre of each door is a moveable wooden 
shutter, these come in very useful for a pyrpose I 
will tell you of later. 
These doors are open, being latched bacls to the 
walls, and are very seldom closed. Below the 
window in each of the three centre divisions are 
pigeon-hole openings with a shelf on each side of 
them; on the inner side this shelf hinges up, 
forming a door in front of the pigeon-hole, and 
completely closing it when not required. In the 
two end divisions the pigeon-hole is not under the 
window, but is placed in the front looking out on 
to the flight. 
The chief use of these pigeon-holes was intended 
to be that in winter the doors between the flights 
and shelters would be shut (making the latter 
portion very warm), and yet the birds could still 
pass in and out at will. J have found, however, 
that the birds care little for the shelters and often 
choose to roost outside, so the connecting doors 
between flight and shelter are kept open all the 
vear round. 
We now come to the flights. The first portion 
is under a sloping glass roof, lined with wire 
netting for fear the glass might be broken at any 
time and the birds escape. This glass roof is 
rather over 5 ft. wide and is made of ground 
glass. In spite of this I found that in summer it 
got so hot that I was obliged to stretch an awning 
over it (as will be seen in the photograph) on the 
outside, for the birds seemed to find the heat 
very oppressive, especially when a nest was built 
directly under the glass. In the winter I move 
this canvas down from the glass roof on to the 
open wire roof, that forms the rest of the flight, for 
it keeps out much of the snow and rain and helps 
to keep the birds warm in the very cold weather. 
Wherever this canvas is, either on the glass roof 
or the flat wired top, it is always stretched tight 
and nailed well down to the woodwork. 
The part of the flights that is just open wood 
and wire is the last portion of each division to 
describe. The wire netting all through is half- 
inch. The front of the aviary (as shown in the 
picture) is wire to within 13 feet from the ground. 
At the ends the woodwork is brought one foot 
higher. I used to have these ends open, but now 
they are boarded up in the portion by the glass 
roof, and covered with canvas in the part by the 
flights. The divisions between the aviary com- 
