Practical Bird-Keeping.



47



into full adult plumage), is as remarkable as his beautiful taxi dermic

work. The bird, it is useful to know, has been fed almost entirely

on hard-boiled egg and mealworms, though of course, like most

•cuckoos, it greatly appreciates hairy caterpillars.


Trogans have never fallen to my personal lot, hut the first

-one I ever knew to be kept in captivity since the time the ancient

Aztecs kept the Quezal ( Pharomacrus mocinno) for its feathers, was

a specimen of the Indian Red-headed Trogon ( Harpactes erythro-

cephalus ) which we had in the Calcutta Zoo in my time. This was

fed entirely on grasshoppers and cockroaches, and kept in a cage. I

also recently saw again the first Trogon ever brought to England,

the Cuban Trogon (. Prionotelus tevmurus ) which was imported by Mr.

Frost in 1907, and had been in Mr. Maxwell’s hands. Other speci¬

mens have since been imported, and the Zoo have owned one and

had two (I believe a pair) on deposit, hut in neither case did the

birds live a fourth as long as Mr. Maxwell’s. Private individuals’

birds must be expected to have an advantage in the fact that their

owners have paid for them themselves ; hut the fact that no attempt

was made to encourage the pair (?) exhibited to breed, or even to put

them in an outdoor flight, shows how little science is regarded at the

Zoo. The young stages of Trogons are almost unknown, and to

have elucidated them would have been to win some of that respectful

recognition from skin-ornithologists for which some of our avicul-

turists are continually hankering, as if the study of live birds were

not infinitely the more scientific of the two, if people needs must

specialise !


The only observation I have been able to make on captive

Trogons is that they hop when moving on the ground, not waddling

like Bee-eaters or most Kingfishers. I should recommend anyone

keeping them to hang up bunches of grapes or berries in their aviary,

as the fruit-eating forms, like the Cuban, which are the only ones w 7 e

are likely to get yet awhile, dart out and pluck their fruit on the

wing as if taking insects. They would need a covered nest-box, as

they breed in holes, and though more active on their feet than many

short-legged birds, are eminently not birds for small cages.


Kingfishers are very easily obtained in India, and I have

hand-reared the common species — much commoner out there — the



