on Recollections of some Bird Friends.



7i



whistle in order to obtain whatever he wanted. Green oats, sponge

cake, mealworms, hemp seed, lettuce leaves—almost any dainty

in fact, he calls for as soon as ever it comes in sight. Lettuce he

is very fond of, but directly he has had enough he tears up the

rest of the leaf in wanton destruction, holding it under one foot

while he tears it to shreds with his beak. He also uses his beak

for digging the sprouting canary seeds out of the mould or damp

sand in which I grow the canary grass for my birds. I never

knew any bird so fond of his cold bath as the Parrot-fincli is.

As soon as a pan of clean water is put into his cage he plunges

in, splashing vigorously, and soaking himself, again and again,

until there is no water left, and he looks like a little drowned

mouse. I often wonder why birds are so much more particular

about their bath water being clean, than they are about their

drinking water. All through last winter, as soon as it got dark

about 4 p.m., the Parrot-finch used to retire to bed in a cocoanut

shell, which he had carefully lined with dry grass. But about

ten p.111., when the candles were alight, he would pop out of bed,

splash about in his bath once more, and after carefully drjdng

himself, make a hearty supper of spray millet. Sometimes I got

impatient, and then, a sure way of making him hurry back to

bed was to blow out one of the candles. He knew he would not

be able to see his way back without their light, so he would hop

back and settle down in a minute. When let out of his cage he

doesn’t fly round and round the room as the Gouldians do, but

takes short flights, and climbs about the chairs and furniture,

enquiring curiously into everything he sees. His favourite

pastime is hunting up and down the plants for greenfly, and

then, I think, he looks his best.


For some mouths I was quite satisfied with my beautiful

birds and wanted nothing more. But at length I was fired with

a strong desire to win the Society’s medal, and began hunting

about the bird shops for something rare and inexpensive. One

day Robert Green told me he had what I wanted, and showed me

some chocolate-coloured birds with milk white heads. “Why

these are only common Cigar-birds,” I said contemptuously.

But Robert Green pointed out that their throats were black,

while in the common kind they are grayish white like the head,



