A TRIUMPH OF PATIENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 250, 19 October 1904, Page 5

A TRIUMPH OF PATIENCE.

MARVELLOUS TRAINED BIRDS. When" Mr Harry Rickards' Variety Company commences its season at. His Majesty's Theatre on Saturday, the programme will include a marvellous demonstration of the perfection to which birds can be trained to do little things very much above the untrained intelligence of the quickest witted feathered billed. Madame Marzella, who has succeeded so well in this fascinating pursuit, and is responsible for. the performance, described her methods to a "Star" reporter to-day. When she had spoken freely about how the apparently impossible thing was done, she told the interviewer that he was welcome to start in the same line, but Madame will have no journalistic rival, for the feat requires more patience than is allotted to the average individual. ' "Patience" is the secret. "Keep on practising" is the method. "If I take a holiday my birds get out of practice," said Madame. "They soon lose their facility.and forget. It is just like teaching a child." "Doyou choose special kinds of birds?" the interviewer queried: "No," said the lady. "I have cockatoos, pigeons and ravens, but I am always on the lookout for birds. Wherever I travel I watch the bird -stores, and I find that any sort of bird will learn tricks after a course of teaching." "Is there any sort of bird with a particularly big allowance of intelligence?" asked the reporter, with a mental vision of a parrot who said very awkward things at the most awkward time, ami then shrieked with laughter. "No. you .can train almost any bird with patience," was the reply. The remarkaole gift of training birds which Madame. Marzella possesses is no doubt due to the fact that she was brought up on a farm and loves animals of all sorts. "You must be a great lover of animals to succeed," she stated. "I have one cockatoo who spells different names," she continued, "and another who picks out the flags named by the audience. Others ride a little bicycle along a wire around the theatre, and a raven will jump through a hoop of fire. Then I conclude with a graphic shipwreck scene, where tie birds go through a number of -actions similar to those which would have'to be undertaken at a real disaster, and the electrical effects in this will be beautiful—a sunrise, twinkling stars, and a showstorm being depicted. You should see the performance," concluded Madame in quite an enthusiastic tone, "the birds are all very anxious to go through their tricks." "How do you reward them?" was the final question, ■ and Madame Marzella said that her pets looked for a little petting and a kind word immediately afterwards. When the curtain dropped they were feasted upon fruit. . .'.