Cage Birds 
I have known. 
( 1 8) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
Cage Birds I Have Known. 
By LADY HELEN FORBES. 
I never walk in my garden and see the weeds 
which, I regret to say, flourish in that good 
soil with, a hardy impudence, without wishing 
that I had an aviary to profit by what is other¬ 
wise so grievous. How beautiful the golden 
tassels of the groundsel, the star-eyed chick- 
weed, the fat, green shepherd’s purses, and the 
brown-green spikes of the plantain would look 
thrust between the bars of a cage, and how 
useful they would then be ! Instead of being 
outcasts and things accursed, which I must say 
they show no signs of minding, they might be 
welcome—in moderation—and gathered care¬ 
fully in baskets rather than hastened to the 
ignominious dust-heap. 
I once kept birds, never many at a time, but 
always with the greatest affection, so that their 
frequent and untimely deaths were real grief 
to me. My whole youth was enlivened by their 
singing from the cages poised in the sunny win¬ 
dows of my schoolroom, so that to speak and 
write of birds is to bring back to me a whiff 
of my early youth. My early ambition—never 
realised; early ambitions never are—was to pos¬ 
sess a real aviary, with nest boxes and swinging 
rings, full of beautifully plumaged and tuneful 
birds. One lady I was once taken to see as a 
child had a possession of this sort, full of Indigo 
birds, waxbills, and nonpareils, and for years 
I ardently desired one like it. 
Goldfinches, however, were always my favour¬ 
ite birds; they are as pretty to look at, in fact, 
less garish than the more generally popular 
canary, and their song does not go through 
one’s head with an equal piercingness. The 
“Thistle-finch,” as he is sometimes called, be¬ 
comes very tame, more so I believe than most 
English birds, and he is hardier than a 
foreigner. He also has not the evil and dis¬ 
heartening habits of the bullfinch, who eats him¬ 
self to death as cheerfully as any dyspeptic mil¬ 
lionaire. I had a goldfinch which was the joy 
of my heart for about four years. He was a 
very tame little bird, and I had chiefly tamed 
him mvself, always an achievement to a child. 
I loved “ Goldie ” dearly, though I fear he had 
no particular affection for me; and it was a 
dreadful day for me when one fine morning he 
escaped from his cage and flew away into the 
open air. I was so fond of him that I used to 
keep a little diary with chronicles of his small 
doings; I have it still, and very trifling it is, 
but my childish description of, as I called it, 
the “black, and also red, letter day” of the 
bird’s memorable flight is most graphic and 
moving. I am glad to say that after several 
hours of great unhappiness for me, we caught 
the precious finch in the garden and brought 
him home in triumph. I was only twelve then, 
and luckily “ Goldie ” lived till I was about fif¬ 
teen and more philosophical. The entry in my 
diary at the time of his demise—“And so there’s 
an end of poor Goldie ”-^-has little in common 
with the passionate grief and excitement which 
moved me when he flew away. 
I do not remember loving any other of my 
birds as I did “ Goldie.” But I had a foreign 
bird of variegated plumage of which 1 was 
very fond. I do not know if it is the right 
name for such birds, but I knew “ Bill ” as a 
nonpareil. He had a pretty little pipe which 
was only heard on warm afternoons when the 
room was quiet, and he was always very wild 
and refused consistently to be handled. He 
remained with us but a short while, and was 
found dead in his cage one morning, perhaps 
of cold. I had soon afterwards a foreign bird 
of unknown name and fierce aspect, which 
escaped like “ Goldie,” but unlike him, never 
came back. He was seen for months after¬ 
wards round the house with the wild birds, evi¬ 
dently on perfectly good terms with them. I 
believe escaped cage birds generally endure a 
very hard time, culminating in a violent death 
at the hands of their wild brethren, but xArsene, 
as the yellow Brazilian bird was called, had a 
very strong beak, with which he doubtless over¬ 
awed the sparrows and chaffinches of Berkshire. 
I never cared much for canaries. I only re¬ 
member one, a crested hen, with a very long 
body and neck, whom we called Gagool, as 
inhabiting my schoolroom, and her only merit 
was her sex and the fact that she could not 
sing. Another bird we had at the same time, 
or a little earlier, was an accomplished Redcap, 
which drew up its water in a little bucket and 
opened a box every time it wanted its seed. He 
worked very hard literally for his living, but 
he never sang, except for an odd note rather 
like a peewit’s. I also owned several green 
birds of the parrot species, but found them unin¬ 
teresting. 
I do not recommend birds as pets for chil¬ 
dren, for if they become cherished pets there 
is such trouble and sorrow when they die that 
it scarcely seems worth it. And as birds are 
short-lived at best, where they are kept there 
are more tearful children than is needful. If 
they are not cherished by their youthful owners 
they are very apt to be forgotten, and this in¬ 
creases the normal tragedies of bird life, already 
so numerous. 
Tits. 
Mr. George Rankin has very happily hit off the 
characteristics of the little group of Tits in the 
plate on the opposite page. They are among the 
most agile of birds, and perform what appear to 
the human eye astounding acrobatic feats among 
the trees when in search of food. 
