might find that, even with him, Blue Mountains were not “ very shy and

difficult breeders.”


The length of time that some of the Lorikeets have lived at the Zoo.

is remarkable.— Reginald Phielipps.]



Sir, — I have had a pair of these beautiful birds for nearly three years,

and have never detected the slightest difference in appearance, except that

the blue lacing on the edges of the orange-red breast feathers is a trifle

more pronounced and the green collar rather yellower in one. I have no

guarantee that they are a true pair, except that they often break off feeding

to kiss and croon to each other: that is, they link their coral beaks together

and talk in a gentle rasping tone, which is no doubt melodious to them but

sounds to me as if they wanted their larynxes oiling.


Circumstances compelled me to keep them the first eighteen months

in a i4in. round parrot cage, and since then they have been in a i6in.

square cage : someday they hope to be in an aviary. I am doubtful whether

two of one sex would have agreed together so long in such quarters.


They are delightfully healthy and hardy. When they were in the

small cage I used to put it once a week in the bath, and pour several gallons

of cold water from the tap on to them, or half fill the bath and roll the

cage in it until they were drenched to the skin. Now there is room to get

a deep porcelain dish in the cage, through which they slide their bodies

time after time in a most comical manner, until they have emptied every

drop of water and splashed it all over the floor.


When I first bought them the dealer of course told me to feed them

on hempseed with a little canary. I am glad I took Mr. Fillmer’s advice

and removed the hemp, leaving the canary, but making the staple food of

biscuit soaked in hot milk. Every morning at breakfast I put a potted-

meat pot on the trivet with six to seven teaspoonfuls of milk in. By the

time breakfast is over, this is hot enough to have scummed over and will

not turn sour in summer. Then I add three teaspoonfuls of a mixture of

thin arrowroot and milk biscuits crushed to a powder, and a quarter to a

third of an average banana mashed up with it. This, with six spoonfuls of

canary seed in the seed tin, keeps them robust and flourishing all the year

round. The only change I have ever made has been to substitute

stewed apple when I have run short of banana, or go without altogether

occasionally.


I sometimes put coarse sea-sand into a tin, but they only amuse

themselves by transporting it grain by grain into the water bottle or food

pot. I often sprinkle powdered cuttle-fish bone into the soft food to supply

lime. Pine sawdust in the tray, and willow branches to peel (they have

already craned their necks through and peeled the wall-paper oft).


I am not given to exhibiting, but sent the pair, last October, to the

Leeds big exhibition, and was quite surprised to receive 2nd prize for large

foreigners: the ist going to a Giant Macaw exhibited by Mr. Osbaldeston,

who wrote about the Swainson’s Lorikeet in the June number.


A. A. Pearson.



