Small singing birds live from eight to eighteen years: the nightingale, in captivity, eight years, but longer according to some writers: the blackbird, in captivity, twelve years, but both these birds live longer in the natural state. A ‘half-bred nightingale built its nest for nine consecutive years in the same garden’ (Naumann, ‘Vögel Deutschlands,’ p. 76).
Canary birds in captivity attain an age of twelve to fifteen years (l. c., p. 76).
Ravens have lived for almost a hundred years in captivity (l. c., Bd. I. p. 125).
Magpies in captivity live twenty years, and, ‘without doubt,’ much longer in the natural state (l. c., p. 346).
Parrots ‘in captivity have reached upwards of a hundred years’ (l. c., p. 125).
A single instance of the cuckoo (alluded to in the text) is mentioned by Naumann as reaching the age of thirty-two years (l. c., p. 76).
Fowls live ten to twenty years, the golden pheasant fifteen years, the turkey sixteen years, and the pigeon ten years (Oken, ‘Naturgeschichte, Vögel,’ p. 387).
A golden eagle which ‘died at Vienna in the year 1719, had been captured 104 years previously’ (Brehm, ‘Leben der Vögel,’ p. 72).
A falcon (species not mentioned) is said to have attained an age of 162 years (Knauer, ‘Der Naturhistoriker,’ Vienna, 1880).