S£)8 THE ^OOlOGIST. 



the birds quickly succumbed to over-eating. The fourth bird lived on 

 happily until the morning of Sept. 18th, when I found him also dead at the 

 bottom of the cage, after being the pet of the family for about two months 

 and a half. Of all the birds I ever kept, and I must have had at various 

 times something like sixty different species, none have proved so confiding, 

 intelligent, or entertaining as these little Martins. Nothing pleased them 

 better than to lie in the hollow of one's hand, and go to sleep there ; they 

 would come at once when called, fluttering up one's arms and settling on 

 the shoulder. One of them, if held up by my son, would spring up and 

 peck the tip of his nose. In spite of their short legs, if placed at a distance 

 on the ground and then called, they would scramble towards us with 

 surprising swiftness. Only two days before the death of my last bird I ran 

 upstairs as soon as I got home to see how he was ; but he had retired early 

 to roost. I called out, " Well, little chap, how are you ? " He popped his 

 head out, and, seeing me, sprang down to the door of the cage ; I opened 

 it at once, stepped back to the end of the room, and then called him ; he 

 immediately flew to me, and nestled down in my hand. Martins are the 

 first birds which I have ever known to evince genuine affection, since they 

 would at once leave their food in order to come to us to be petted. There 

 is only one drawback to keeping them as cage-birds ; their wings are so long 

 and their legs so short that they get very dirty, both tail and wings being 

 dragged constantly through the dirt; and then they have to be washed, 

 which tends to give them cold. It is also difficult to provide them with a 

 uniformly warm temperature. — A. G. Butler (Beckenham). 



The Song of the Redwing. — Mr. Butler, if founding his statement 

 (p. 352) on observation of the habits of a pair of Redwings confined " in a 

 large aviary for two years," is hardly in a position to "state positively" the 

 characteristics of the song of the species. My authority for this remark 

 may be found in the extraordinary extent to which the voices of the great 

 majority of our song-birds are affected, in captivity, by the influences 

 incidental to residence in or near human habitations. One has only 

 to turn over a few pages of ornithological works to meet with recorded 

 instances of cage-birds such as Whinchats, Linnets, and Redstarts, to say 

 nothing of more apt natural mimics, having uttered the perfect strain of 

 some wild bird. Three of such instances have come under my personal 

 observation : A Sky Lark imitated the song of the Wren so exactly and 

 repeatedly that I was deceived — this bird was caged closed to a country 

 garden ; a Linnet, in a country signal-box near trees, similarly deceived 

 me with a splendid song of the Blackcap ; and a tame cock Blackbird — an 

 excellent singer — in my possession, reproduced in every detail a wonderful 

 association of sounds caused by the daily opening of a window thirty yards 

 distant from his cage. In studying bird-song, I have acquired some 

 proficiency in detecting whether singers, such as Blackbirds and Thrushes, 



