Some Notes on Keeping Parrakccts. $\ 



white spots near the base of some of the flight featliers. Vouiil;' 

 cocks have these white spots cilso, but old ones liardly ever. 

 'J'he g'reen feathers round the eye I have found to be the most 

 rehable indication of sex. I have never seen the most 

 brilhantly coloured hen entirely without them, nor an adult 

 cock who possessed the least vesti.ge of i^reen at the back of 

 the eye. Young" birds are less brightly coloured and clearlv 

 marked than their parents and show less red and more green. 

 They grow gradually brighter during the course of the first 

 year and by mid-winter a practised eye can pick out the cocks 

 from the hens. Full adult plumage is assumed at the first 

 complete moult, which takes place when the l)ir(ls are about r4 

 months old. ( Jther nearly allied sjiecies resemble the Rosella 

 in this respect and the st.atement that PJaiyeercine parrakeets 

 take ■■ three or four years " to assume adult plumage - 

 inconect. Rosellas are double-brooded and the hen often 

 starts to lay again before the first lot of young have left th;: 

 nest. Xo anxiety need be felt, for it is a perfectly natural 

 proceeding" and the cock can be trusted to attend to the wants 

 of his first family w^ithout neglecting" his sitting mate. The 

 young" are fed by the parents for some little time after leaving" 

 the nest. As they are rather inclined to dash about at first 

 and injure themselves against the wire, it is wise to fix um 

 plenty of twiggy branches as a screen at the end of the fligh^ ; 

 also to make some extra provision in the way of overhead 

 shelter against heavy rain. These precautions should be 

 adopted when an interesting brood of parrakeets of any species 

 are expected to get on the wing; nothing is more vexatious 

 than to pick up a beautiful young" bird with a broken neck or 

 to find it on the ground drenched and dead after a thunderstorm 

 in the night. 



Rosellas show a certain amount of variation according 

 to the district from which they come; the handsome.st race is the 

 so-called " yellow-mantled." formerly described as a separate 

 species — Platycercus splendidus — ; it differs from the common 

 form in having the feathers of the mantle edged with golden 

 yellow, instead of pale green. Tasmanian birds are also very 

 fine and often have a line of red feathers running down the 

 entire centre of the breast. 



