so?ne Experiences of King Parrakeets. 299


and is not natural—I cannot say, nor do I know why he considered

that the small-talk of fowls was an appropriate medium for express¬

ing his devotion. He may perhaps have said to himself, lt I have

spent at least twenty minutes in addressing this lady with all the

endearing epithets my language contains and she won’t pay the

least attention. Possibly she does not understand what I am saying,

I will therefore talk to her in the language of the birds of the

country and see if that will make any impression upon her ! ” I

have only once heard him going through his chicken performance

since and, as on the first occasion, he used it as the final argument

in a proposal of marriage. When the warm weather returned I

again put the Queen with the cut-winged birds in the quadrangle

and this time she did well enough. Her appearance caused great

excitement and the three cocks spent most of the day displaying

before her, biting her mildly from time to time to revive her interest,

whenever they thought that she was allowing her attention to

wander from their proceedings. The old cock, curiously enough,

was driven away by both the cut-winged birds—whom one would

have thought he could easily have mastered—and was obliged to

keep at a respectful distance. Still he remained in the vicinity of

the hen and, probably on account of her presence, underwent a

great change of disposition. Ever since he first came to me he

had been rather a shy bird and frequently would not allow one to

get within thirty yards of him without taking alarm. Suddenly,

however, his timidity vanished, and when one day I wished to drive

him out of the quadrangle, where he had shown a disposition to

bully some cockatiels and appeared likely to injure them, I found it

impossible to make him go. He let me walk right up to him and

hit him over the wings with my handkerchief, and even then only

flew slowly round and returned to his original perch within three

feet of me, regardless of my hostile demonstrations in his face. For

quite ten minutes I pursued him, belabouring him as hard as I could

without risk of really hurting him ; at the end of that time I had

thoroughly alarmed everything else in the place, except my friend

the King, who was as cool as ever and as determined to remain. I

retired defeated ! Of late, however, he appears to have grown tired

of the indifference of the Queen and the unfriendliness of her two



