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J. Appleby—Notes from a Lancashire Aviary



Two of my aviaries are just rectangular boxes, tubes along bottom

as well as top, and so need no foundation and simply rest on the ground

and, having no trouble from rats or mice, the wire does not go below

the bottom tube. Furnishing flights with shrubs, grass, and plants in

general is not so simple as it sounds, for it all depends on the birds

you keep. Nothing green lasts or lives with Canaries or Budgerigars.

I’m wrong, they neither will touch bluebells. I have not had any trouble

with Australian Finches, or West African birds, Buntings, Weavers,

or Wydahs.


Box bushes, cupressus, and berberis are good varieties, and tall

sedges, Cyperus longus , flags, iris, hemerocallis. So keep your Budgies

and Canaries to themselves, they stand very rough treatment with me

and the others will be the happier without them.


If you wish to turf your flight floor good rough sods will stand best,

but the drip from wire roof seems to upset the grass and the zinc off

the galvanized wire is just poison to any green plant, so you may have

to do it each year, it all depends on the aspect of your flight and if

your wire is painted. I generally leave my flights rough, as many of

the Waxbills, etc., build in last year’s dead stuff and like to hunt

among the bents.


Of course, some very heavy stuff like iris leaves have to be moved,

otherwise Nature deals with droppings and humus. Perches are

branches hung horizontally from the roof, and I try not to have one

branch above another, so droppings do not collect on any.


Now for a word in support of Mr. Teague’s note on salts in bird

food. Last autumn I saw a consignment of 3,000 Australian Finches

arrive at the Liverpool Zoo in excellent condition. I bought a number

and they are going strong to-day (two pairs Ruficaudas nesting out¬

doors). The cages (over forty) were excellently arranged, and I was

informed that the death roll from leaving Perth to landing at Hull

was only five. I can believe it ; I asked the cause and was shown the

method of feeding and watering, which, by the way, took a man and

a boy two hours to go once round, and as this was done three times

a day and cleaning added it was a full-time job. Yellow millet was given

in a large tin, for a certain time, ascertained by the way the birds fed,

taken out and the same tin supplied with crushed sea-shell and charcoal,



