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Correspondence



a gimlet and on the reverse side pierce another blind hole § in. deep, and put

your pliable wire through and hammer the end in the blind hole. When you

have got the exact position of the bottle you can then, by placing whatever

dish or tray you intend to use under the neck of the bottle, saw off the inch

timber to the exact length for the shelf at the bottom. For a bird-bath a 5-in.

seed-pan, which can be got at any market gardeners, is excellent, and you can

cut the length of your wood to allow -J, f, or 1 inch depth of water.

For a drinking fountain a shrimp-pot answers, but in this case £ in. clearance

is ample. For a seed-hopper a bit of beading round the bottom shelf answers.

In this case do not have your shelf more than 4 inches square, and both for

a seed-hopper or a drinking fountain do not allow more than in. space from



the bottle-neck to the bottom of the tray or shrimp-pot. If one is using

larger seeds a larger necked bottle will have to be used. There is only one

snag in using a whisky bottle, it is a bit slow to fill with seed. But one of the

cheap funnels got at the 6d. bazaars, if put over the gas-jet for a few moments

allowing the smaller end of the funnel to drop off, allows of a larger hole in

the funnel used in filling the whisky-bottle. I use a pair of square-ended pliers

with J in. nose to bend my wire.


One great advantage of using the inverted bottle is that it allows of

a separate bottle for each kind of seed or mixture, and you see at a glance

what seed is going. Again, if the seed-tray is small, it does not allow of the

birds getting in the tray and scattering the seed. Where I first saw the idea

only one or two pairs of birds were in each aviary and three-ply wood was used

with small medicine-bottles, but as I have thirty to forty birds in each of

my aviaries I find that the whisky-bottle is more useful, and the birds scrapping

to get to the food-tray flap their wings and thus blow away the seed-husks

that may be dropped in the tray.



Herbert Norcross.



