ANIMALS' MEAL-TIMES.
SPEAKING of the difficulties of keeping tropical birds through the -English winter, Mr. Wiener, in a paper read before the• Ornithological Congress, mentioned his own experiences. He said that it was not the cold which kills them; for you can keep an aviary warm quite as well as an orchid-house, but the long winter nights. Birds have the sensible habit of going to sleep when the sun sets and waking up when it rises. But in the Tropics, where the hours of day and night alter but little, all the birds wake up at dawn, or possibly a little later and soon seek their food, which they are not long in finding. If brought over to live in our " sub-Arctic climate, under crepuscular skies," they cannot endure the fifteen hours of darkness and starvation of the British December night, which begins at 4.30 p.m. and ends about 7.30 the next morning, or in London not before 8. Their systems cannot stand it, and the Northern winter morning finds them absolutely exhausted from want of food, if not dead. Mr. Wiener adopted the ingenious plan of turning on an electric light in the aviary early. The birds thought it was sunrise, woke up and fed, and then went to sleep again. This idea may have been borrowed from the Continental mode of fattening ortolans. The ortolan always feeds at daybreak. The bird-fattener therefore places his ortolans in a darkened. room with a draped window looking into it. Outside this several times in the day and night a bright light is placed, and the birds, thinking that it must be breakfast- time, wake up and conscientiously devour several extra meals a day.
There can be little doubt that Mr. Wiener is quite right, not only in his surmise as to the natural time at which birds require their morning meal, but in his inference as to the bad effect on their health if they do not obtain it as early as possible. It was found that some young rooks being reared by band, after they were well fledged were quite weak and faint by 8 o'clock in the morning, and could with difficulty be induced to eat at all. But when fed at 6 o'clock or earlier they remained well and strong all day, and fed readily. Young wild ducks when brought up by hand receive and require their first meal at 7, but would do better if fed at 6, and the terribly early hour at which young starlings and young sparrows desire their breakfast is known to every one who has the misfortune to have a bedroom window close to one of their noisy broods.. Sivallows actually get up before dawn; and the old birds sing a long twittering song almost in the dark. But they; do not begin to feed their young till 6 o'clock, as the gnats and flies do not come out, and the gossamers do not rise, till the day is " well aired " and the dew is getting off the grass. Wild geese, which mainly feed by day, come inland for breakfast exactly at sunrise in the winter, neither earlier nor later ; but other birds, such as: the partridges, are astir earlier, and busy feeding with the first streak of dawn in winter. In summer the sun is up before their breakfast-time, and it is quite possible to be out, in broad daylight before most of the birds have thought of feeding. The writer bad an interesting experience of this when out and about on the skirts of the Yorkshire Fen early one August. At 4.30 there were sheets of mist hanging over the wet meadows, through which the sun shot shafts of radiant light. The night birds, such as the herons, were still out, and standing by the pools or in the reeking wet grass, where the waterhens were also feeding. But it was not till some time later that the partridges woke up and began to call; neither did they move to the few stubbles or open fields, for it was an early harvest, till 6. The rooks and jackdaws sat in the trees and cawed, or flew down to the dykes and drank copiously, bat they likewise did not begin feeding till 6 o'clock, when the pigeons were also busy. By 9 o'clock at latest all the birds have fed in the summer, and then adjourn either to a dust bath or a water bath, if they know where to find one. At 12 o'clock precisely partridges go to drink if there is any quiet place near. If not, they will fly some distance to a pond, generally rather liter in the day, from 1 to 1.30. In the autumn the little seed-eating birds, such as linnets, redpolls, and -other finches, feed from 7 o'clock
till about 10, and that is the time when the bird-catcher sets his nets. It ie,,quite- useless to do so later, until the time comes for the evening meal. Nearly all the small birds try to drink at noon. On the dry tract of Tunstall Heath, in Suffolk, there is a drinking pool, with very little water in it, by the side of the road leading from Orford to Canipsea Ash. Birds may be seen coming there from all parts of the heath at noon, almost as regularly as if summoned by a bell. Late in the afternoon most of the birds which fed in the early morning seek a second meal, which in winter many of them prolong till it is quite dusk. Among these are partridges, linnets, larks, and most of the grain-eating birds ; but rooks do not feed in the evenings as a rule. In spring they dawdle about their nests, quite after the manner of a
City man who has come back to his house in Kent or Surrey, and likes to look round his garden. In the summer they usually spend at least two hours before dark sitting half asleep on the open downs. It may be added that jackdaws are perhaps the thirstiest of all birds. They drink at all hours, and end up by a teetotal drinking party about 7 p.m. in summer. Probably half the tame jackdaws kept as pets end their days by drowning in garden tanks and water-tubs. As a rule, all the hawks, except the kestrel, or sparrowhawks with young ones, make their " kill " almost as soon as it is light. They eat as much as they can, and then spend the day mainly in digestion, though those indefatigable birds, the peregrine falcons, sometimes kill or chase other birds out of mischief later. But it is very rare for any one to see a peregrine hunting in earnest after 7 o'clock. If ho kills, he is almost certain to come round to the carcase at daybreak the next morning, and sparrowhawks do the same. Seagulls seem to have fed enough for the day by noon. It is rare to see them searching actively for food in the afternoon, and on summer evenings they sit about on meadows or ploughlands half asleep, and looking like lumps of chalk.
A very large class of birds, including all the shore waders, widgeons, sheldrakes, and other ducks which feed on the muds exposed at the ebb tide, have no "regular" feeding hours, in the sense of the word in which we understand regular meals. The moon, or whatever it is which causes the tides, arranges that for them. They are " tide waiters," and their meal-time changes every day. On a great Norfolk lake near the sea, whence all the fowl of the neighbourhood pour forth to feed by night, it is noticed that the wild ducks proper leave regularly at dusk. But the widgeon come out at any hour of the night, knowing by instinct when the tide is right for them, and the marine grasses and muds are exposed. A pretty instance of this instinctive knowledge of the state of the tide is said to be shown by the sheldrake or "burrow duck," which often nests some dozen or fifteen feet underground in a sandhill. Tho hen bird is stated to know at once when the tide is low, and to leave the nest to feed at the proper hour. But in Norfolk it is noticed that the drakes. fly round the sandhills and call the ducks off, telling them quite plainly that they ought to come out to supper or breakfast, as the case may be.
Of our common English quadrupeds, whether wild or tame, the rabbit feeds four times in the twenty-four hours,—twice by night and twice by day. The hare, on the contrary, only feeds by night. Cattle graze both day and night, lying down at intervals. Sheep are day feeders mainly. Horses, which have large bodies to support and small stomachs, naturally feed several times in the day and also graze by night. The larger carnivore, among which dogs should be included, naturally make a " kill" and gorge themselves upon it. On this ancient and " bed-rock " habit is founded the meal-time of foxhounds, which when there is a meet are fed only once a day, after they have done their work. But it is agreed that to keep ordinary domestic dogs in health they should be fed twice, with a light meal in the morning and a substantial supper in the evening, after which they go to sleep contentedly and do not bark. Of all English animals, snakes are the only representatives of the classes of animal which have no set meal-times at all. But as they only feed about once a fortnight in summer and go to sleep all the winter, regular hours are perhaps too much to expect of them.
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