128 The History of the Rud^engrar . ' 



had no more bad youngsters till about 1908 when an odd one 

 or two were hatched out and soon done away with. By this 

 time, however, the jii^eneral standard of the young had markedly 

 decreased, bui the introduction of a real i^ood \)?^\x of Yellows, 

 which started breeding at once, soon produced sufficient pro- 

 geny to provide plenty of healthy stock, which have been 

 mating ever since with the Greens as well as among their own 

 colour, so that now our birds are a Green- Yellow cross, but 

 each individual shows his proper colour, not a mixture of the 

 two, though Yellow and Green young are sometinies found in 

 one nest, the owners of which may be green or yellow, or one 

 of each. The general result has been that we have had no 

 " French moult " for years, and have a quite good-looking 

 stock, though perhaps this year a slight deterioration is be- 

 coming noticeable again among the Greens. 



One would have almost have expected that such prolific 

 and hardy birds would have by now become acclimatised with 

 us and be living wild in Europe, though, whether such an 

 addition to our avifauna would have been for the general good 

 is distinctly doubtful, judging by what has happened with 

 other wild birds and animals which have been successfully 

 acclimatised elsewhere. 



Gould considered that our climate and the food avail- 

 able was the chief factor against this, but the real hindrance 

 is probably not so much the climate, etc., as the man with 

 a gun, and the bird-catchers, professional and amateur. Plenty 

 of instances of escaped Budgerigars living wild for long periods 

 are on record; Dr. Greene, for instance, mentions a pair which 

 brought up a brood of five young in a London Square, which 

 when fully fledged were often seen with their parents dis- 

 puting with the Sparrows for oats at a neighbouring cab- 

 stand, but whose ultimate fate was unknown. A larger and 

 intentional experiment in this direction is ciescribed by Mr. C. 

 P. Arthur, the noted English breeder of these birds in the 

 Feathered World of January 2, 1903, in a letter in reply to 

 an enquiry as to the number of young and whether seven was 

 a record hatcla. The whole communication, giving, as' it does, 

 the first-hand experience of an authority, is also so informative 

 on other features of Budgerigar breeding, that I quote the 



