STUDY OF BIRD LIFE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 81, 29 December 1934, Page 7

STUDY OF BIRD LIFE

“An Aviary on the Plains,” by Henry G. Lamond (Sydney: Angus and Robertson). In opening one of Mr. Lamond’s books, the nature-lover assures himself of delight and interest until the final closing. Mr. Lamond here begins :— Let us build an aviary. Our eastern and western walls will be the 137th and 130th degrees of lougtitude and the 20th and 22nd parallels will prevent us straying too far north or south. . . In it our captives have the right to move as they wish, to live or die as is ordained for them, and to fight and love and burden themselves with the cares, of Domesticity as the Pates may decree in their predetermined orbits. The reader is not troubled with scientific names and descriptions in this book. Instead he is shown vivid pictures of the birds themselves, their habits, their nesting-places and the tragedies that overtake them in the course of nature. Listen to this:— This bird . . . has been coloured by a cubist artist In a jazz dream. Apart from that, it’s composed apparently of oddments of ornithological structure. It's a Woggy (Bald Coot). Everything seems wrong with this bird. Its beak is too heavy, its legs too cumbersome; its toes seem twining serpents in their grotesque length, and its stubby tail is but a stump. Its eyes are smouldering specks of fire, its beak and bald head have been dipped in blood, its wading legs show scarlet when they’re lifted from the water, its switching tall is white, and the rest of its body is an opalescent flame of blazing indigo and daubs of black. Mr.' Lamond’s gift of close, patient and oft-repeated observation is outstanding. The bird-lover will find entertainment and amusement combined with much practical information in “An Aviary on the Plains.”