251 



^be BreeDiitG of I>ennant'5 iparral^eets 



(Platycercns elegansj, 

 WITH SPECIAL refp:rence to the coi,ouring oe their 



YOUNG. 

 By T. N. W11.SON, M.A. 



IN the autumn of 1903 I saw in one of the big 

 dealers' shops in the Kast Kud of London about 

 twenty Pennant's Parrakeets, newly imported. 

 The majority were in one of those large box 

 cages familiar in such shops, but a few were in pairs in 

 separate cages. I noticed that these supposed pairs 

 consisted in every case of one bird in adult, and the 

 other in immature plumage, and the dealer's wife said 

 that the greenish or immature birds were the hens. 

 I pointed out that although they might be hens, their 

 plumage showed, not their sex, but their age. The 

 lady paid no attention to my remarks and evidently 

 thought that I knew nothing about the matter. I con- 

 fess that my knowledge of Pennants was not great, 

 and was not at that time even first-hand, as, although 

 I have been an aviculturist since the seventies, I had 

 never possessed any of these birds. On returning 

 home 1 wrote to the dealer for four Pennants so as to 

 make sure of a pair, because I did not trust the shop 

 views on sex distinction. In due course they arrived, 

 two in mature, and two in immature plumage. Un- 

 fortunately I did not notice them very particularly, 

 and do not remember the exact markings and colour- 

 ing of the immature birds, or whether there was any 

 black about them. They were in a rough and dirty 

 condition, and differences in their plumage could not 

 therefore be so readily discerned. Also, at that time, 

 I was not prepared to look for any striking dissimi- 

 larity in the colouring of young birds. 



The writers whose works I know do not give 

 full information, or are silent on this point. Wiener 

 and Butler say nothing about it. Gedney says " The 



