Caged Birds

As I write, I can see, on the window sill, one of those mechanical birdcages beloved of the Victorians and Edwardians. You know the ones, a gilded cage with a music box mechanism underneath and three or so brightly coloured birds which appear to sing - or at least tweet - and move their beaks and tails when the thing is turned on.

Why do these exist? Clearly they're meant to replicate the less convenient but truer birdcages containing canaries and their ilk that used to be a feature of a range of houses and are still to be found in places like (unsurprisingly) the Canary Islands, the Balearics and parts of Spain.

But is this replication just to make things easier? Obviously there's no feeding to be done, no cleaning out and, moreover, the birds sing on demand. Or is it a response to the guilt (rarely I think felt by our ancestors of a hundred years ago) about caging a pretty bird?

We in (most of the) west now feel strongly supportive of song birds and there are some of us (I include myself within this group) who feel there should be much greater clarity around the permissions to knock-off magpies which are a primary cause of the decline of the smaller (prettier) birds.

Of course these managed conservationist views are not universal. Indeed, I've just returned from a trip to Malta where - I gather - that anything that moves and has feathers is fair game for the pot - and apparently the smaller the better. And I would also argue that such views are also very recent dating probably no earlier than the publication of Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring'.

All of which means our ancestors did not produce mechanical caged birds for the sake of morality but almost undoubtedly for reasons of efficiency. Birds die, moult and only sing when they want to. As Ogden Nash once rhymed: "The song of canaries never varies, and when they're moulting they're pretty revolting."