The Natural History of Cage Birds: Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment, Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them.Bechstein, Johann Matthäus
Science
The Natural History of Cage Birds: Their Management, Habits, Food, Diseases, Treatment, Breeding, and the Methods of Catching Them.
Bechstein, Johann Matthäus
Cage birds
only succeed by giving up to a tame healthy pair a whole room, in
which a sort of grove should be formed of branches.
DISEASES.--In general moulting amounts to a disease among
nightingales: at this critical time they require a more succulent
diet, and sometimes a spider by way of purgative. If their stomach is
disordered they puff up their feathers, half shut their eyes, and
remain for hours with their head under their wing. They are relieved
and cured by ants' eggs, some spiders, and by giving them
occasionally water impregnated with saffron till it is of an orange
colour, to drink.
As to those diseases which they have in common with other birds, they
are treated according to the directions given in the Introduction. It
is especially necessary, every three months, carefully to remove the
large scales from their legs and toes. A nightingale may be kept in
confinement fifteen years; whilst in a wild state they are never
observed to exist so long in the same spot, which seems to prove that
they do not attain so great an age when exposed to all sorts of
accidents, both from birds of prey and bird-catchers. I have an
instance of a nightingale which has lived twenty-five years in
confinement. When they have reached six years they begin to sing less
frequently and long, with less brilliancy and ornament; it is then
better to set them at liberty in the month of May. The open air often
invigorates them so much that they regain their song in all its force
and beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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