The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 7, 1902, Page 6

of the Qity’s Great Avviary With Tts Mang.Rued Warble s: s walk of them? ng walk or o go is while the g from his ruses by ng afte nable affair, and s of the programme < from ever hear- st be a mornin estival and , and if her who love at she provides wealth they may y wear or who they may he w ed ber in the arranging for r he has provided a which she may wondrously made 4 the earth for her and has t here. If some of them ing they make effective supernu- s search 1 artists fc takes place shortly shaken his golden Zarth, and the sing- t number over one nge thing about 1t st who composed less it be the simple dy sings the same tune, but bubbles forth into the most as- r of trills, with a go-as- there is never of the chorus is same strange way, for it all of the hues of the lends like 2 sunset. 1 you guess where this house of song s, where a stage settings are in the een, the color that na- Solden Gate Park rning air in the e of walking until you get tory. Then you ar the swell of the you straight to es of the park € you will find those are songs in instrument of This is the home of birds of the air, e four corners of the orus of the morning is big green inclosure on . the home of the cana- narius of Linnaeus, and many other unex-_ re is much home mak- on in this place, some of the ing no less than y green houses est the pink-billed e foreigners in robes s, sweeter t a, where they had va. They are great g here all the year s seem alive with the yel- of the large family of lin- s. When the aviary was years ago there were sixty ck it with; now sixty-five spe. opened birds to of the sunrise cho- rus there is still much preening and prink- ing of feathers to be done, and no doubt much gossip of the bird world is dis- cussed, perhaps in this fashion: “So the ve contracted, have they, for t is under way for little the time this is over ir. Wr there elong it walk outside and there isag r for the trees nearest the sound. Such a chatter as goes, too! A up his bead and twit- :,” and sure enough the friend and birds, who has been com- wheelbarrow filled with trays nuts and cracked corn every since the aviary was opened. the inside of things at it is James keeper of THE SUNDAY CALL. e ey Ashley. The singers are such good friends arcely object to a refreshment cart to with him that they stranger following h every one of the little tables that are set about among the trees. Just let him get inside the meeting and then another cho- s begins, a chorus both of fluttering gs and voices, and this time possibly not so altogether melodious. But every- bod in it, which shows that the way to the heart of a bird may be very much like the road to the heart of humankind. Even the freaks of the chorus, in many cases the most gorgeously clad, come right into the front row and make all the noise they can, All the other houses of the aviary are heard from and from the outer space comes the excited scream of the peacocks. The parrots chatter excitedly. Even Madame Canary, who has been staying at home religiously in the little yew tree with her precious eggs, comes fluttering after the wheelbarrow. All the rarities in the aviary are on hand. As the keeper stops and scatters millet and canary seed on one of the little tables, one of the first to hop forward to a good square meal is the Persian nightingale, the bulbul of song and story. This is a domineering lit- tle fellow in a vest of red and yellow and a grayish coat, who wants everybody to “shinny on their own side” of the seed table. He sings his liquid rush of notes as well in San Francisco as if in his native land. But he is not a good cage bird. His name is said to have been derived from some of his notes. Among the flutter of rich yellow and golden brown wings of the canaries and linnets comes once in a while the sober 8ray and white of the Virginia mocking bird, one of the greatest little fighters in the aviary. Two of them engaged in an {ll- tempered encounter have been known to drop prone upon the ground from exhaus- tion, but still fighting. Down by the mossy green basin of the fountain as the feedbarrow Boes on its way come quietly and somewhat shyly two gray-clad visitors from Australia. Their plumage is somewhat Quakerish, but upon thelr breasts gleams & blood red Epot, 80 vivid that one wonders if the bird is bleeding or wounded, These spots are in the shape of a heart, so that the Aus- tralians call them the Bleeding Heart Pigeon. They are the most delicate birds of the aviary. From somewhers in the depths of the green sounds the call “Bob White! Bob White!” of the Virginian quail, loud and clear, as If in his native woods. He may be late, but he will not be left out for breakfast. Across the walk and into the other inclosure, where the foliage is denser in spots that the shy guests may feel more at home, goes Jim with his wheelbarrow, calling, “Billy! Billy!” as he goes. There is a whirr as he nears the 5 shady feeding table, and among the glint of numberless pigeon and dove wings, “Billy,” a sober, brown dove, floats down to greet his friend and eat from his hand. This is a dally function, looked forward to by both. " a Out of the dense follage at the other end of the inclosure comes a queer scream that sounds as if the bird emitting it must be at least as large as a turkey. Not 8o, but rather a black and white gray pigeon known as the wonga-wonga of Australia, and somewhat resembling a guinea hen. It is shy, and comes down late to break- fast. Not so the long, slim, brown bird of good size called the Mexican peafowl, a varlety of pheasant. The male has a sober crest or topknot, and the female of the two, which have never mated, comes _from Brazil, and is smaller and still less noticeable. They are very tame, and come running across the grass, ready to eat even from the hand of a stranger after a little chuckling note. But they are somewhat pugnacious, and instead of taking the grain offered sometimes give the hand of thelr would-be friend a sharp peck. Occasionally against the green are seen the brown, mottled forms of the Chinese and Japanese pheasants, shy but elegant, waiting till they can have a private meal apart from the common herd. Almost the first comer after the rustle and strut of the tamer pigeons has some- what “subsided is a personage with a saucy, flame-crowned head and clad in the - scarlet of Mephisto. He is ‘the Virginia cardinal, or red- bird, of .the bunting or grosbeak family, and he dances around and thinks he is the whole thing for justabout one seconi. His song is as sweet and clear here as in “Ole Virginny,” where he used to blaze on the zigzag fence rails or flit through the green arches of the clay roads, but he is not much of a fighter, for he promptly vacates in favor of a score or more of finches and the Mexican peacock, who brushes most of the seced and grain off the table with the long feathers of his tail. All the time the pigeons are circling’above and strut- ting below. A brown and white pouter perches on a nesting box above and looks wise and comfortable. Among the notes comes the call of a Mexican dove. In the sunny air gleams for a second the wings of a new arrival, the bronze wing pigeon of Australia. Copper of the most lustrous cannot rival the hues of its plumage. The crested pigeon of the same country is here also. Some white fantalls spread their feathers with a sidelong flirt as they sample the grain among the grass. Under the thicker shrubs parades constantly with the movement of a vapid swell with an extra high collar a biue and white pouter, the most comically im- portant of them all. So pronounced is his “pout” that itors frequently in- quire as to the nature of his “ailment.” He turns round and round with a funn uncertain, swaying gait, very much like an affected miss. A dashing, gamy look- ing cock and a dainty little hen patrol the grass all the day. They come direct from the jungles of India, wnere they are known as the jungle fowl, the wild origi- nals of the fowl of our barnyards. Not long ago the hen raised a family of two little brown youngsters, whom she has deserted, and they may be seen foraging for themselves in the grass afar off. These fowls are good fighters and bear a strong resemblance to the famous games. A pretty little fellow i{s the Zulu finch, a native of California, wearing robes of black and gold after the fashion of the orloles, who may be seen ‘among the branches also, sometimes peeping from thelr hanging nests. Even a more anxious spot at the early morning ‘eeding hour is the big, circular inclosure which the squirrels divide with the birds and an immense turtle from In- dia. There are not many singers in this crowd, but they are all pretty good screamers, from the Eastern bluejay, who goes up and down on the branch as he screams with a motion like that of a car- riage spring, to the group of magpies al- ways eager to steal something or get into a fight. These black and white fellows, with the shadings to metallic blue, come from vastly different countries—England, America and Australia. When the keep- er comes within the door such a shout of derisive joy goes up from this crowd! One of them, “Gus,” the comedian of the lot, comes quickly right to the tray that Jim carries and perches on the edge of it for g/feed and a chat, for he is smart enough to be a talking magple. Jim says, “What are you doing?” and the bird re- peats it after him with a perfect enun- clation and a cock of the head that is ir- resistible as the laugh that follows it. It is a perfect human laugh, though it comes from the throat of & bird. Then he says “Good-by.” and flies to dispute the breakfast of some other bird. Gus was the pet of a well-known woman, who, going away, turned him over o the ten- der care of James Ashley. Another in- teresting magpie character 1s Mike, from - _(UBIOU/ [BIRDS TGHTINGRLE Oregon. Every year these birds make queer-looking nests up in the framework of the cage, but they never breed. Gus is an American. The Australian king bird, a specles of paroquet, files down to the feast a gor- geous spectacle in habiliments of vivid crimson dashed with black. Away up on one of the supports of the wire netting a brown rail runs restless up and dowu, sighing, perhaps, for its native marshes. It is a variety of this bird that is so sought after in the South for the table, under the name of Sora. The Virginia swamps are at a certain season alive with them. - Among the foreign birds in this abode with its bare tree trunks and grassy floors are the Chinese and Japanese mock- ing birds. The former is a slim, good- sized bird of brown and yellow plumage. It sings fairly well. The second is more sober in its dress, being of a dull combin- ing of gray and black. It has no song more than a whistle, from all accounts. By the little trough of water in the center of the cage stands for hours at a time a mournful-looking Hawallan goose. It is gray and slightly smaller than the Ameri- can goose, a flock of about thirty of which often make a fine sight when sail- ing on Stow Lake. Sometimes through the outside alleys of the aviary will parade a line of stately peacocks, once the favorite bird of Juno. Or it may be a crowd of rackety, clacking guinea hens. Off beyond the aviary in separate Inclosures are a number of pea- fowl with their young, looking like little turkeys. They begin to make their nest about March. The nests consists of sim- ple holes in the ground scratched any- where under the brush in the park. There six weeks later as many as six brown baby fowl haye been found and taken to the care of James Ashley, aided by the mothers. They are not like a hen, in that they will care for no children save their own. Just opposite the cage of the screaming magples is the roof that harasses the king of the air, or one of them, the great California condor. As Iif he knew that there are not many of his species left, he holds aloof from the curious birds below, and passes his days sitting on a branch as far up toward the open sky as he can yet. Once in a while he stretches out his ten-foot ex- panse of wing, as if he longed to breast the air once more. Then he sleeps, and it is only when the decomposed meat that is his food comes that he shows signs of in- terest. Sometimes, perhapa in the early merning, he comes down to earth. He is somewhat of a coward. Once in a fight with the black Guatemalan pheasant, he of the stunning erectile crest of curled feathers of jet black, whe lives below, the great vulture was beaten. The pheasant i¢ a pugnacious creature with a soft little throaty call when you speak to it, and at other times it makes a strange booming noise, perhaps with its wings. In the same cage live a happy family of cocka- toos and owls. After the sun goes down comes the good- night chorus of the aviary, drowsily soft and in keeping with the hour. Then come rest and bird dreams untfl it is time to wake and sing the chorus that heralds the coming of Jim. —_————— The great temptation after exposure to the heat and the probabilities of sun- burn is to wash the face. Water acts like a mordant to set the dye of the sun- burn. The complexion that possibly might have escaped with faint redness becomes scarlet and even blistered after washing, says the St. Louis Star. Wipe the face gently with cold cream or with ordinary sweet cream, and the effects of the sunburn will soon pass away. Before going out in the heat apply a little cold cream to nose, cheeks, neck and hands. This will prevent tan and sunburn and is an excellent prevention before ta:lng a sea bath or swim or a row on the lake or i a turn on the goif