on Nesting of the Malabar parrakeet.



269



nificent collar he wore. But, frankly, the others were distinctly

bored. True he did deign to feed the hen when she came

off for a constitutional. He was not a very brave or bold bird and

invariably left her to do the burglar hunting. I fancy that lady

Malabars have a pretty poor opinion of the sterner sex. He certainly

has no domesticity in his tastes at all. Only one egg hatched out and

the chick did not differ in appearance from any other young parra-

keet. All went well for about a fortnight. The mother bird was

most attentive and fiercely resented any other parrakeet approaching

the barrel wherein reposed her precious infant. My delight was

simply unbounded. I felt absolutely confident of success, but just

as everything seemed most promising, one morning when I went

into the aviary, to my surprise the hen bird did not leave the nest, a

thing I had never known before. I feared for the worst, viz.: that

the hen had deserted her chick. It teas a disappointment. How¬

ever, in aviculture we become philosophic after a while and after

many disappointments. But ■ I never dreamt of, much less antici¬

pated, the full tragedy that met my gaze as I went to investigate.

For there lying on the ground just beneath the nesting barrel lay my

hen Malabar parrakeet dead ; done to death by some feathered Hun.

I have suffered remorse and disappointment many many times

before, but this seemed to crush me utterly. Some brute must have

attacked her from behind and eventually googed the poor bird’s eye

out. My wife, all too late, told me she had seen a mealy rosella

squabbling with poor little Mrs. Malabar once or twice and careful

examination indubitably fixed the guilt on this beast of a bird. He

proved himself a real Hun once before, by killing my tamest of

tame orange-flanks, but as I thought they were the aggressors,

I forgave him. The sad part was that I knew T I was over¬

crowded and had given the order for the other parrakeet aviary to be

repaired as it had collapsed under the weight of snow earlier in the

year. Still had I known there had been fights I would have caught

the rosella and rather have wrung his neck than allowed him to remain

at liberty. The stable door is locked now—of course it is—but I have

no Mrs. Malabar and no baby Malabar to cheer me now, and every

time I enter that aviary


“ I feel like one who treads alone the banquet hall deserted.”



