THE



Hvicultural /nba^asmCt


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



VOL. IV. — No. 38. All rights reserved. DECEMBER, 1897.


PARROT NOTES.


By the Hon. and Rev. F. G. Du'TTOn. ;


Whenever I undertake to write about Parrots, I am always

astonished at the very little I have to say. No fairy godmother

gave me the gift of imagination, and I seem to have little to tell

except some plain facts which are very much against all the

romance with which Parrots are: generally surrounded.


I must have been born with a hobby for Parrots, for I

cannot recollect the time when to have a Parrot was not my

great wish. It was probably a case of atavism, for I have always

heard that my great-grandmother had a " bird and beast room,"

as it was called, at Sherborne. But I did not possess a Parrot till

I was 15, since when I have rarely been without one, and often

have twelve or fourteen. As I am 57, that means 42 years of

Parrot-keeping, so I ought to know something about them. But

I have only arrived at a sense of my ignorance.


I confess that I have been narrow-minded. It isn't every

Parrot I care about — I am always in search of the ideal pet. It

must be as small as a Bullfinch, talk like a Grey, have the

intelligence of a dog, and the beauty of the Paradise Parrakeet.

It must not bite and it must not scream, and it must be as tam6

as a Troupial. And it must be clean. In what species is this

combination to be found ? It will be seen that it at once excludes

a good many, and therefore my experiences are more limited

than if I had set to work to keep Parrots with the purse of

a Rothschild and the thoroughness of a German.


Parrots must be fairly popular, for the demand seems

unlimited. It would be interesting to know how many thousands

are yearly imported to Liverpool alone. What becomes of the

greater number of them ? I think we know — the dustman's cart

or the back garden receives the vast majority in a few weeks.

But the mortality is chiefly confined to the Greys, though I was



