173


PARROT NOTES.

By the Hon. and Rev. F. G. Button.


(Continued from page 6^).


II.— CONURES.


The Macaws should naturally be followed by the Conures,

but here I must confess to a great lacuna in my knowledge of

Parrots. The Conures have never appeared to me attractive from

any one point, neither that of colour, nor of intelligence, nor of

harmlessness, nor of silence. They seem to me noisy, mis-

chievous, indifferent talkers, and not particularly beautiful.

The Patagonian Conure I have been tempted to try, but I feared

that it might prove as noisy as a Macaw, and more destructive.

I had a pair of White-eared Conures, which were given to me

because one picked itself. They were turned into an aviary, but

they shewed no sign of wishing to breed, and as they were wild

and uninteresting I parted with them.


I had in my charge for some time four specimens of

solstitialis. These certainly were beautiful. All four slightly

differed in colour, which may have been owing to their being

5^oung birds. They resembled Jendayas, but were of a more

brilliant orange and red. Bechstein says they learn to speak

easily and well. Russ makes no remark upon their qualities as

pets. These were noisy and wild, and though I put them under

the charge of a woman who was particularly fond of animals,

they never became tamer as long as I had them. Perhaps had

they been kept singly they might have grown tamer.


The one really fascinating Conure I have seen was a

specimen of biteus, or, as the British Museum Catalogue calls

it, guaronba. This was a specimen which was deposited at the

Zoological Gardens, and was for sale for ;^io. It was extra-

ordinarilj^ tame. You could swing it about by one leg or by the

tail ; it would lie on its back in your hand, and delighted in being

played with ; it was said to be a good talker. The plate of it in

" Parrots in Captivity " is a good one. In that it will be seen

that the flight feathers are green, and I hardly think that is the

idea one gets from the description of it in the British Museum

Catalogue. It is a lovely gold lemon yellow, with white beak

and feet. Later on Mr. Bartlett had two young ones, which were

very fairly tame and nearly all green. Those three are the only

living specimens I have seen, and with them conies to an end all

that I can say about Conures.



