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MY FOREIGN DOVES AND PIGEONS, 
the open flight. I put in one corner of the flight a 
lidless box on its side, with a handful of hay in the 
bottom for the little birds to nestle in. The box 
is a good size, and acts as a sort of shelter. By 
these precautions you will notice the young are 
kept on entirely dry flooring for some time after 
they leave the nest (for if the weather is wet and 
cold they are not even allowed to leave the shelter), 
and this I regard as very important. Young birds 
are given to squatting much on the ground when 
first they leave the nest. If they do this on wet 
ground what can you expect? .\ chill follows, the 
young.one becomes very relaxed, the parents, 
realising that it is not quite healthy, promptly will 
have nothing to do with the poor thing, and it 
just weakens and dies. In doves, and in animals 
also, the healthy dislike the sick; they feel that a 
weakling is better dead. The survival of the 
fitiest is to them one of the first laws of nature. 
After a time the young ones get able to fly up 
on to the barrier, and then it is perhaps better to 
take it away, taking care to have the bath covered 
over and no deep water pots, for fear of any 
accident from drowning. Unless you have a spare 
house that you can give up almosi entirely to vour 
young birds of the year, it is better not to move 
them for some time after they are able to do for 
themselves. 
Young birds are very nervous; they will fly 
straight at the wire, and perhaps maim a leg or 
a wing for life, on seeing a stranger, and, there- 
fore, if you are wise you will allow no visitors in 
the aviary during the nesting season, for birds are 
quick to notice anyone unknown to them, and one 
terrified young bird may cause no end of damage 
both to itself and to other nesting birds. 
Indeed, at all times it is as well to be careful 
who sees your birds. Children are always a risk, 
also anyone wearing very light clothes or who will 
point out a bird they notice with a_ stick or 
umbrella. Who can wonder if the poor inmates 
mistake it for a gun? Or, again, if a lady comes 
adorned with a many-headed fur, or a whole parrot 
mounted in her hat, can vou blame the birds if 
they are frightened? I remember once being 
asked if two people staying in the town could sce 
my birds. I said ‘Yes,’? and they duly came. 
The lady wore a hat with a bright cmerald green 
dyed Ringneck Parrakeet—head, beak, body and 
tail—standing straight up in it. The young man 
had no more sense than to try to rouse my poor 
grey parrot (who was ill with inflammation) by 
blowing at it through the cage. I do not think 
either of these people cared for birds—they were 
mercly passing the time by coming—-but it was 
their first and last visit, for the birds were terri- 
fied. So, at the risk of being thought unkind or 
selfish, stand up for your birds’ comfort, and, have 
the courage to say ‘‘No"’ politely when you deem 
it desirable to refuse a request to ‘‘see the birds.’’ 
Some people, of course, it is a pleasure to take 
round, but they are mostly people who are con- 
siderate or who nave kept birds themselves, and 
so understand them. 
When the young birds leave the nest they should 
be carefully watched to see that the other doves 
do not molest them. Several times I have lost 
promising young ones in this way. Sometimes I 
have found the parents will look after one young 
bird—-usually the first out of the nest—and neglect 
the other. There will be little hope for you of 
rearing the forsaken young one. Some few times 
I have hand-reared the hardier kinds by giving. 
them a little yolk of egy and mill thickened with 
oatmeal, just dipping the beak into it, and, of 
course, after the bird has fed, taking care to keep 
it warm; but I doubt if a bird so reared would 
ever be very strong, and to have any chance at 
all it must be taken in hand early, before it gets 
too weak.* 
I have a pair of Barbary doves I keep as foster 
parents, for, suppose they lay, and another rare 
dove lays at the same time, and you know the 
latter is a bad sitter, you can easily change the 
evgs. This year my Barbary doves brought up a 
neglected young Dwarf Turtle, just a day or two 
old, with their own young one, who was about the 
sume age. But it is this point that is the diffi- 
culty. I do not pretend to fully understand it, and 
it would be mosc interesting if someone would 
make a series of careful observations, but, as is 
well known, whilst doves are sitting, just before 
hatching, the soft food prepares in the parent 
birds’ crop to feed the young one, and is ready by 
the time of hatching for that purpose. As the 
young one grows the food thickens. 
Now suppose you place some eggs under a Bar- 
bary that were laid and sat on a few days previously 
to their own, what would happen? The strange 
eves would hatch before the soft food was ready in 
the foster parents’ crop, and the young would die 
of starvation. If, on the other hand, the eggs 
hatched some few days after the soft food had 
been ready, the chances are the young would not 
be fed, though whether this is because the food 
*\ have late’y gained further experience in hand feeding. For food 
1 should give Malt Milk, pepsinated meal (both Spratt’s) mixed with 
water as directed ; both are in powder form like flour. Besides these 
‘‘soft foad,” mixed with powdered biscuit and moistened, and later 
soaked and crushed small seeds. For a feeder use a shaped and 
rounded quill tooth pick, pushing the food off the quill with the right 
iore finger. Hold the nestling with your lett hand, letting it stand on 
a flat surface, the beak between the base of the first and second finger. 
Held in this way the young one thinks the parent's beak ts enclosing 
ifs own, and will open its beak naturally for food. A young dove 
taught me this accidentally. Put your nestling on a bed of hay covered 
with flannel in a flower pot, placing perforated zinc over the top, and 
put the pot on hot pipes or a flat hot water bottle. Feed every two 
hours, from about 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. 
