NEWCOMERS AT THE "ZOO."
THERE is an excellent opportunity for providing a study of protective colouring in the surroundings of one of the newest arrivals at the Zoological Gardens in Regent's
Park. He is a bittern, and he has been placed in the Fish House, or Diving Birds' House as it has come to be called,
where he lives alone in the large cage at the end of the room,—
the cage which has lately been the home of ruffs and knots and that curious and immobile bird the boat-bill. The bittern is quite as motionless as ever the boat-bill was. He stands nearly always in the same attitude, with his neck drawn down between his shoulders and his head and beak pointing upwards, rather like a feathered pear with a dagger where the stalk
should be. He makes himself as compact as he can, and the angle at which his eyes are set enables him, when his beak is
pointing directly upwards, to look straight before him, so that his beak has the appearance of a sharp crest belonging to a bird without any bill at all. It is this habit of standing with his bill stuck in the air which, with his wonderfully striped plumage, makes the bittern a singularly perfect instance of a large bird harmonising exactly in colour and form with its surroundings. The dagger-shaped bill corresponds precisely with the sharp tips of the reeds in which the bird would naturally stand watching for its prey ; and the tapered shafts of buff alternating with darker stripes and mottlings might be so many more shorter reeds with shadows and gaps between them. The " Zoo" bittern ought to be given some dried and grow- ing reeds to stand among ; he would make with them as good , a living picture " of- protective mimicry as could be imagined. If he would then add to his attractions by being so obliging as to " boom" at intervals, he would surely become the most popular bird in the Gardens. Most of us have thought that we should go all our lives without hearing a bittern boom in England. The marshes in which bitterns used to nest have been drained, and the bittern, like the quail, has left us in consequence, so that what was once one of the most character- istic sounds of the English countryside in spring has come to be no more than the memory of a few villagers living on old- age pensions. But the " Zoo " bittern, which is tame enough not to resent visitors, and wild enough still to feel the instincts of his brothers out on the marshes, can take us even to-day back to the sights and sounds of the countryside of a hundred years ago. He has boomed more than once since he came to the Gardens, and passing visitors any day may be lucky enough to hear the voice of the " bootherboomp " or " bull-of-the-mire," as the fen-country people used to call him.
The "Zoo" just lately has managed to acquire some rather exceptionally amusing birds and animals. One of the most interesting is the new puma, 'Prince,' a fine strong young creature which has not quite lost the spots of his baby's coat. He has hardly arrived a month from Argentina, and if only he were not so rough he would make a fascinating play- fellow. He is tame and glad to be played with, and lets the keeper put his hand in his mouth just like a puppy, but when
he seizes an arm affectionately in his paws you can see that
he would be a little heavy to box with. That might be expected, considering that a full-grown puma dislocates a horse's neck with a single wrench. But the new puma is most attractive when he plays by himself. He possesses a wooden ball, which he stalks and catches, and he has another game of watching something which nobody else can see in his straw, and springing out and annihilating it. Just at present he suffers occasional pangs when a neighbour of his, another new arrival, is let out of her cage. Her name is Gypsy,' and she is the smallest Malay sun-bear in the " Zoo." When she is lifted down out of her cage, she is filled with but one idea; she waddles solemnly to the door of the keeper's room, where she has been given water to drink, and hopes there is still a good supply. She is a broad, solid little animal, moving very near the ground, and patting her is like patting a badger.
Some animals which are passing their first spring in the Gardens, and are worth watching, are the prairie marmots in the Squirrels' Trees Inclosure. They are not nearly so much noticed as the grey squirrels to whom the trees belong, but they are far more amusing. The squirrels have few ideas in life except to receive as many nuts as possible from passers-by, which they take and eat with engaging rapacity; but the marmots have other things to think about. They are shyer than the squirrels, and will not come to fetch nuts ; but if you throw a marmot a nut he darts at it as if he had had nothing to eat for a month. The three or four marmots which you can generally see by waiting a little while by the enclosure are usually extremely bard at work at something. One will be enlarging his burrow as if he were bound to get it finished within the next half-hour ; another will be collecting pieces of grass and stalks, which he bites and tears at with extraordinary energy. At intervals one of them does a most ridiculous thing. You see him at the entrance of his burrow, on all fours, waiting quite still; then he suddenly throws his fore- paws up over his head, flings himself upright, utters a piercing cry which is half bark, half squeal, and comes down on all fours again. Another marmot, sitting at the next burrow, perhaps does the same thing ; possibly they each do it rapidly three or four times, answering each other. The effect is as if some one had told them a story quite too shocking to listen to, and kept on telling it again and again. You look from one to the other, and discover with a start that there is only one, then that there are none. No animals contrive to vanish into their burrows more silently or swiftly.
A change which adds a good deal to the picturesqueness of the entrance to the Gardens is that a number of macaws have been brought from the parrot-house to sit on open-air perches on the gravel path. One of them, much admired by children, asks continually for "mother." But the best talking-bird new to the collection is a raven who came to the Eastern Aviary last year. " Hullo ! Jack ! " is his favourite remark, and it is the voice of one who meets an unworthy friend. Soon after he arrived be used his conversational powers with great effect upon a lammergeier who shares his cage. The lammergeier had a piece of meat which the raven desired, but he was unwilling to surrender it. The raven hopped up. "Hullo! Jack ! " he began, and the lammergeier, aghast at the voice of man, dropped his dinner and fled. But the lammergeier was never a bird of much spirit. The most spirited thing which has been done at the " Zoo " lately belongs to the credit not of a bird but a bear. He is a young Syrian bear, and had been trained to the discipline of a regiment of Territorials; however, the regiment wished to have a mouflon instead, so the Syrian bear came to the "Zoo." He had hardly been there a week when, last Sunday, he had the temerity to put out his tongue at a hyena. At least, the result was the same as if he had insulted the hyena in that way. There was a tiny crack in a filled-up grating between the two cages, and the young bear, which licks everything it can, in a moment of aberration put his tongue through the crack. The striped hyena from Nigeria was watching, and the moment the tongue came through he seized it. Fortunately he only bit through the tip at the side ; the bear howled, but got his tongue back, and has been trying to make it better ever since. All Tuesday morning, when he had recovered a little, he stood bolt upright against the wall of his cage and licked each front paw in turn as fast and as wetly as possibly, accompanying the licking all the while with a sort of growling croon, some- thing like the noise of a mowing-machine. He has another cage now, away from the hyena. But that was not the first remedy tried. The first thing the keeper did, after trying to look at the bear's tongue, was to stop up the crack in the wall with a piece of wood. But it would not do ; the bear clawed down the wood at once. He liked the hole as it was.
The best of the new arrivals at the " Zoo " is the enclosure just completed for the polar bears. Everybody who knows the Gardens will remember the old cage ; a cramped little den with a bath not much bigger than one of the bears, and absurdly insufficient for two of the finest swimmers in the world. That is all done with. The new enclosure is some twenty-five yards square, with a big pond in it, and a high rock in the middle of the pond ; the water is as much as five feet deep, and there is plenty of room at the sides for the creatures to walk about ; the whole enclosure is open to the air and surrounded by a high curved railing, over which the public can look down at the bears from a raised tenTace ; there are also supplementary ponds in the enclosure, one of which is fenced off so that a new arrival can be placed in it
and kept there till the others are used to it. Nothing could be pleasanter than to watch the two polar bears,' Sammy' and ' Barbara,' in their delight in the deep water. ' Sammy,' at first, did not understand. When he got into the pond and found that he did not touch bottom, be struck out wildly, just as if be had no notion how to swim at all. Now he is used to it, and swims as a bear should swim who in polar ice would dine off walrus. But Barbara.' is happier even than he is. 'Barbara' likes to take running headers and dive and stand on her head and float in every conceivable position in the water, all day long. Her keeper has given her a log of pinewood, and she puts it outside the bars of the cage for him to pick up and throw into the pond for her. He picks it up, and perhaps runs round the outside of the enclosure and goes up the stairs to the terrace where the visitors are looking on; ' Barbara' rushes round after him. He throws the piece of wood into the water, and 'Barbara' crashes in after it with the most inspiriting of headers ; then she brings it out under her arm, or perhaps holding it to her cheek with a paw. The keeper calls to her to give him the log, and she comes to the side, stands upright, and cleverly pushes the log through the bars on to the terrace; then the game begins again,—that is, of course, if she is in the mood, for ` Barbara,' being a lady, occasionally will take no notice of anybody living. But the game with the log is going to be superseded by an even better game. A gallery is to be run out along the fence of the supplementary pond, and from the gallery, some day soon, the keeper is to throw fish for San' and Barbara' to catch and swim for, just as the sea-lions catch and dive for fish in their pond. There is a doubt, it is true, whether polar bears can be trained to play games as sea-lions can. Perhaps ' Sam ' and 'Barbara' will do as well as the sea-lions ; perhaps they will not. In any case, what is certain is that the new enclosure with its space and its deep water has made new bears of both of them.
Previous page
