i34 Ca.var/es Avn Cage-Birds. 



water ; but when the poor little birds come afterwards within reach of a drink, they are 

 ipt to injure themselves by taking too great a quantity too suddenly. With very little care 

 and thought this danger can easily be avoided, by giving the birds only a few drops of water 

 at first, and ad libitum afterwards. 



Sometimes a shipment arrives with a loss of only two to five per cent., and in another 

 season the mortality during the voyage may be fifty per cent, and even more. There 

 have been seasons when disease became epidemic, and nearly all Undulated Grass 

 Parrakeets died during the voyage or soon after ; and a quite unusual mortality was then 

 observed among Budgerigars of former seasons, and beyond the reach of direct infection. 

 This, as well as the fluctuating import, accounts for the rapid fluctuations in the price of 

 this favourite bird during one season. In the early part of 1879 Budgerigars could be bought 

 retail at three shillings per pair, but sold readily a little later for ten shillings. One would 

 have thought that dealers would hasten to buy every shipment offered at the low prices — 

 for the Undulated Parrakeets only arrive between January and July — and would have kept 

 them until their price rose again. But the experience of former years had taught dealers that 

 it is far better to sell rapidly at a small profit in preference to risking an epidemic and 

 consequent total loss of the capital invested. The birds imported in 1879 proved unusually 

 healthy, and any one buying them might have re-sold them within three months at treble the 

 amount paid for them. Notwithstanding the immense importation, few imported Budgerigars 

 can be bought in the autumn, and the market is then supplied with young cage-bred 

 birds. 



On the plains of Australia the Undulated Grass Parrakeets live on grass-seed, and in 

 confinement they care for little else than canary-seed, and nothing agrees with them so well. 

 To tame Undulated Parrakeets is a difficult task, for the simple reason that the birds are 

 entirely indifferent to dainties, and we have no means to tempt their confidence or reward 

 them for their meeting our overtures half-way. They will not touch sugar, they are not very 

 greedy after green-meat ; we may withhold water, and they do not mind it in the least ; the 

 only thing they absolutely want, and which we cannot leave them without, is canary-seed, 

 to which we may, if we please, add a little millet and some oats. The only way to tame the bird, 

 therefore, is by perseverance in regular feeding by the same hand, accompanied with a little 

 coaxing. Talent for learning to talk the bird has none, but one or two authenticated cases 

 are recorded of Budgerigars learning to say a word or two, probably about as well as the 

 talking seal (called talking fish) once exhibited in London. Not unfrequently the Undulated 

 Parrakeets will, however, learn to imitate the song of a Canary or of other birds. 



It is very easy to breed the Grass Parrakeets in confinement. In their natural state they 

 breed in holes of old trees or any other cavity, and all that is required is an appropriate nesting- 

 place. Some like the husk of a cocoa-nut, others a hollowed log of wood. They will lay 

 four to seven white eggs on the bare wood or on a few chips of wood, and hatch them in about 

 twenty days, the young remaining about five weeks in the nest. If the nests are not quite 

 to their taste, the Budgerigars will lay their eggs on the floor of the cage, and there hatch 

 them. 



Various breeders have recommended the most heterogenous kinds of food for rearing 

 young Budgerigars. Some recommend bread and milk, others ants' eggs ; others, again, egg-food, 

 &c. I believe that healthy Budgerigars require no such, to them, unnatural food, for I consider 

 the birds as strictly seed-eating, and believe they will best bring up their young on canary- 

 seed. Intending breeders should be warned against a few obstacles to success. Single pairs 



