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I have kept a good many parrots, I know too little about them to

form theories.


But it will be obvious to anyone who reflects that a race of

birds inhabiting such different parts of the world as Patagonia

and Mexico, the Amazons and the Andes, the Himalayas and

New Guinea, Australia and Bengal, are no more likely to be

suited by one diet, than they are by one temperature. A cocka¬

too will thrive in a temperature that would kill a grey parrot.


When I buy a bird, or acquire it, I like to know what it

has been fed on. If the bird is a picture of health, it doesn’t

matter how unsuitable I may think the food, I go on with it.

One of the best conditioned greys I ever saw, had nothing but

hard maize and water. Most parrots are indifferent to maize and

will not eat it. And even if the bird is plainly being fed

wrongly, and the food is not suiting it, I should not change all

at once. Birds will very often refuse to touch food, if it is

strange to them. I sometimes think it does not enter their head

it is food, and they are not like man, who will eat anything to

stay the pangs of hunger.


Perhaps-—I hope it is so—that birds do not siiffer as man

does when he starves. I gave away some linnets once that I had

reared by hand ; I had fed them on rape : they were given canary

seed. They coidd have cracked it perfectly, but they died

without making any effort to do so. Therefore, if you want to

■change a bird’s diet, do it gradually.


Some people like to forbid bread and milk, others sop,

others hemp. I have not been able to do so myself. I do not

like bread and milk. I do not care about boiled maize. Both

are apt to go sour, and I think bread and milk likely to give

■dysentery, however sweet it may be. But I had to give it to my

Macaws, and boiled maize : they required it and throve on it.

A friend had a Pionus violacens from Guiana. It was very tame,

but it always seemed to be wanting something, and it was not

thriving. This was before I had kept any Macaw, and thought

bread and milk an abomination. Something, I forget what, led

me to try feeding the bird with bits of bread and milk from my

fingers. That was clearly what it wanted, and from that day it

was contented and throve. But there came a day when it,

unlike the Macaws, outgrew its bread and milk, and took to seed.

I have once or twice seen parrots in the bird shops young enough

to be still calling to be fed. Those I should certainly feed with

bread and milk for a time.


I should perhaps have done better to have made my



