67 



extinct, as they live and breed in districts where no white man 

 conld go and make it pay. It was very different away back in 

 the fifties, when the first few pairs fetched ^50 a pair. 



£be Bu&Qerigar in Captivitv?. 



By Wesley T. Page, F.Z.S., etc. 



This is intended not as a complete account, but merely a 

 few notes in comparison with the interesting account Mr. Payne 

 gives of its wild life, which is certainly all too brief. 



A Eulogy: Certainly at the present time, in spite of its 

 being cheap and common, it is a universal favourite. If any 

 species of foreign bird may be called "everybody's bird," most 

 decidedly the Budgerigar merits that title. Again, there are 

 few birds to my mind more beautiful than a well conditioned 

 Budgerigar, and the original stock, viz., the Green variety, I 

 consider more beautiful than the more costly Yellow — man's 

 creation. To be seen at their best they must be in a roomy 

 garden aviary, which allows of herbage of some kind being kept 

 up. In such an enclosure the display is very fine at all times, 

 while to watch them after a shower and note the abandon with 

 which they throw themselves about and roll in the wet herbage, 

 as they thus take their bath is a sight to be remembered for many 

 a long day, and one which the writer often misses since his 

 aviaries have been occupied by rarer, but certainly not to the 

 eye more attractive species. 



Their Fecundity: In the aviary, as is well known, they 

 use a husk or log in lieu of the hollow limbs of the Eucalypti 

 which are so plentiful in their native haunts. In captivity their 

 fecundity is even greater than when wild, for many pairs in my 

 aviary have reared three or four broods each season consisting of 

 from four to seven, and not by couples as in their native haunts, 

 so that for the progeny of say three pairs to reach fifty in a single 

 season is by no means an extraordinary occurrence. In 1906, 

 two pairs successfully reared thirty-six young to maturity. They 

 retain their wild habits sufficiently to lay another clutch, before 

 the earlier brood has left the nest, and as a consequence many 



