Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/317

Rh — Attempts have frequently beeu made to rear the Dipper, or Water Ouzel, in confinement, but without success. Mr. Bartlett, the energetic superintendent of the Zoological Society's Gardens, has on several occasions received the newly-fledged young of this bird, and has repeatedly, although unsuccessfully, endeavoured to rear and keep them alive. Whether this want of success was owing to uncertainty as to the proper food to be administered, or whether the peculiar temperament of the bird rendered it unable to brook confinement, was for some time doubtful. By trying almost every kind of insect and other food, Mr. Bartlett succeeded for a while in rearing the birds ; but just when his efforts appeared likely to succeed, a change would take place, and the birds would die, one after the other. Sometimes they would get too wet, and would apparently die of cramp ; others that had been kept away from the water wasted and died of exhaustion. It was evident that he had not discovered a food that suited them. They had been tried with the usual food for most insect-eating birds, such as scraped beef, and hard- boiled eggs, ants' eggs, meal-worms, spiders, flies, beetles, aquatic snails, shrimps, salmon-spawn, &c, but all failed, until at the suggestion of his assistant, Mr. Arthur Thomson, he tried the experiment of feeding them on scalded meal-worms ; it was soon apparent that in this condition the meal-worms could be digested, while in a raw or living state (especially their tough skins) would pass through the birds in a hard and undigested condition. After this experiment, he had little trouble. The birds fed greedily upon half-boiled meal-worms, and were soon ready to leave the nest. He accordingly fitted up a cage, having the nest under a piece of rock-work at one end, and a shallow pan of water at the other, in which the birds soon began to dive and swim about. This spring, Mr. Bartlett procured from Merionethshire six Dippers from two different nests, and under the above treatment they have been successfully reared, and have become very tame. Writing under date June 13th to a contemporary, Mr. Bartlett says: — "They are now about six or seven weeks old, feed them- selves or nearly so, being excessively tame, and they still come to be fed by hand. Since they have taken to feed themselves, the food has been greatly varied by introducing caddis-worms, and other aquatic insects of small size, found among the weeds : this affords them much amusement, and they throw up castings, or pellets, after the manner of raptorial birds ; the pellets consist of the parts of the insects that are not digested. It is most interesting to watch their movements, bobbing up and down, flying from place to place, and diving under water and extracting the caddis from its curious covering. I can no longer doubt that the charges brought from time to time against our pets — of appropriating a small portion of the young trout or salmon-fry — are true, for they are most expert fishers ; but I feel per- fectly satisfied they do not eat the roe or spawn of fish. As I have before