Amongst the stranger sights encountered by a visitor to London Zoo in the late 1950s was the sort of wooden shed/aviary more often seen in the back garden of a suburban house. The aviary had been built close to Three-Island Pond. I never saw any inhabitants but the labels/guidebook told us it was an aviary for homing budgerigars erected in memory of the Duke of Bedford who had died in 1953. The world was informed around the time of my visit that the budgerigars had been confined to the aviary because Sparrowhawks and other predators were catching the birds flying free in Regent’s Park. Eventually, the aviary was removed.
It is difficult to conceive of a more useless exhibit for a modern zoo, and those in the zoo world are utterly amazed that such a thing was once thought desirable. How did the aviary and the ‘homing’ budgerigars come to be there?
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| Hastings William Sackville Russell 12th Duke of Bedford by Walter Stoneham bromide print, 1952. NPG x164005 ©National Portrait Gallery, London |
When the 12th Duke of Bedford, Hastings William Sackville Russell, died in 1953 the world of aviculture together with the bird fancy, always tugging their forelocks to their aristocratic members, produced glowing obituaries. The duke (not to be confused with his father or his son amongst whom the hated was mutual) had been a noted keeper and breeder of birds throughout his life, regularly publishing articles in Avicultural Magazine and Cage Birds under the junior title he held until his father died, Marquess of Tavistock. He specialised in parakeets and other psittacines, known, inaccurately, in the bird fancy as ‘parrot-like’ birds. What was not mentioned in the obituaries and reminiscences was the Duke’s notoriety as a crank. His very strange world view led him to espouse pacifism, fascism, anti-semitism, christian evangelism and support for nazi Germany throughout the war, conduct for which others were arrested and imprisoned. He was summed up by his eldest son, whom he tried to disinherit, as: ‘The loneliest man I ever knew, incapable of giving or receiving love, utterly self-centred and opinionated. He loved birds, animals, peace, monetary reform, the park [Woburn] and religion’.
His death was mysterious. He was found two days after his disappearance on the estate of his house at Endsleigh near Tavistock in Devon (where he kept many of his birds) having been shot with his own gun. The search involved estate workers, police, soldiers and Royal Marines. Cage Birds (15 October 1953) reported as follows:
It appears that in the early morning of Friday last, Oct. 9, His Grace, who had travelled down to his home (Endsleigh) a few days previously with some Budgerigars to add to his stud of homers established there, went out to shoot a Sparrowhawk which was menacing the birds. While stalking the Hawk he seems to have stumbled when forcing his way through some bushes, the gun going off and inflicting fatal injuries.
Both at Endsleigh and Woburn it was the Duke’s practice to release his homing Budgies very early in the morning unless the weather was foggy or otherwise unfavourable.
The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death after hearing evidence of a shot to the head (The Times 14 October 1953). The lawyer for the family suggested the circumstances to a police superintendent at the inquest: “Assuming that a man was sitting cross-legged watching for something with his gun beside him, if he pulled the gun towards him at this particular place would it be possible for the trigger to catch in any branches?” The reply was “Yes, very possible”.
His eldest son reported in his autobiography that a number of people close to the duke, ‘who had become very depressed during the last months of his life’, thought suicide the more likely explanation for a skilled and safe handler of a shotgun.
The avicultural world then came up with the idea of a memorial, and that idea came to fruition in the form of the aviary for homing budgerigars at London Zoo. The duke had recently published a booklet on establishing colonies of homing or, more accurately, free-flying budgerigars. John James Yealland (1904-1983), Curator of Birds at the Zoo, had previously worked for the Duke of Bedford as aviary attendant.
Wild Budgerigars can be seen in this video:
I just could not help wondering if the memorial to the duke—essentially a garden shed with short-lived inhabitants—was deeply ironic. Was it the equivalent of the £5 left in the will by a millionaire to a despised nephew, or the 1p tip left for a rude waiter? But, no. Press reports stated that it had been built from the subscriptions of budgerigar fanciers; the birds were first released on 18 April 1955. A March 1954 article in the Londonderry Sentinel stated that nine pairs of homing budgerigars had been bought by the Zoological Society from the executor’s of the duke’s estate and:
Site chosen is the old prairie marmots’ compound next to the Three Island Pond Enclosure.
‘The installation of the budgerigars’ home involves much preliminary work.’ Mr John Yealland, curator of birds, said today. ‘First, the 7ft.-high fence lining this enclosure, and two old lime trees in it, will have to come down.
‘The burrows made by many generations of marmots over the past 30 years will have to be filled in.
‘After that, we are putting up a specially designed aviary which will have holes in the roof, in and out of which the budgerigars can fly.’
It was the Avicultrual Society which organised the whole thing. There is a full account, with photographs of those attending the official opening of the aviary by the 13th Duke of Bedford in Avicultural Magazine (61, 3, May-June 1955, 129-130 plus plates).
By June 1957, budgerigars were breeding in the trees of Regent’s Park with press reports indicating the birds fed entirely in the park during summer, returning to the aviary to feed only during the winter. Excess stock was being sent to hospitals, making their homes in the wards and the budgerigars ‘fly in and out of the windows’.
However, as I noted above, the homing budgerigars didn’t last long; Regent’s Park’s Sparrowhawks and other predators discovered them.
The idea of flocks of budgerigars living free during the daytime and returning to the aviary in the evenings did live on. There are reports of a number of budgerigar fanciers attempting to emulate the Duke of Bedford in the 1950s and 60s. The author Roald Dahl had a flock and a hotel in Barbados advertises that it still does. The release of non-native birds into the wild has been unlawful in Britain since 1981.
UPDATED 15 January 2022
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| This map of London Zoo from 1940 shows the site of the marmot enclosure which the homing budgerigar aviary replaced in 1955 |
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| The large arrow on this 2019 map of London Zoo (from the opposite direction to that of 1940) shows where the homing budgerigar aviary was situated. |
UPDATED 15 January 2022
Duke of Bedford. 1953. Homing Budgerigars. London: Cage Birds
John, Duke of Bedford. 1959. A Silver-Plated Spoon. London: Cassell (and 1960, London: Reprint Society)
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