Correspondence, Notes, etc.



343



Hanging Parrakeets) they have been supplied with sop and boiled rice and

milk. Up to now they have touched neither. Fruit and green food they

eat, but not ravenously like they do Canary seed; other seeds are left alone.

They are heavy feeders as one might expect from their stout build and

active habits.


One pair especially look as if they mean business in the nesting line.

An aviculturist can’t carry on without lots of hope, so I have dreams of

young Muskies in spite of clipped wings and wrong feeding; what will

most likely happen is that they will pop off into lovely corpses without

warning.


“ Parrakeets” is a ripping book, small chance for a poor aviculturist

to keep the Tenth Commandment if he has this book; still I think the

Musky hardly gets his due as regards plumage, the illustration hits off my

birds for purposes of identification, which is the great thing, but the blue

on the head is the only colour approaching that of my birds in vividness,

the yellow on the sides coming least near to the live bird. The head in the

live bird is much more massive and formidable looking. Size or rather

length differs, judging from dimensions given in the book compared with

other Parrakeets and allowing for different shapes and tails especiall}', I

would swear my birds are not under io inches in length, probably a bit

more as against a little over 8| in the book. The tail too is different in

shape and colour. In the live bird it looks a bit longer proportionately,

but this may be due to the wedge-shaped part at the end of the tail com¬

mencing much nearer the base of the tail giving the idea of less breadth.

Then there is no mention of red in the tail, this would be plainly visible in

the illustration, though the tail is not much spread out, especially in the

outer feathers. The difference in length of the tail feathers from centre to

outside is much greater in the live birds, which gives the different shape.

To return to colour, the base of each tail feather is red, much duller than

the red on the head, but still fairly bright. Close to the base green appears

on the outside of both webs, increasing towards the shaft till the feather

becomes all green towards the tip. The two centre feathers have very

little red at all, and the two outside ones have very little red on the out¬

side webs. When the bird is at rest no red is visible in the tail, but it is

very noticeable both from above and below (as when crawling up the wire)

when the bird is on the move.


Can my birds be not Muskies, but some nearly allied species?

Surely some one who has kept these birds would have noticed the red on

the tail, even if the other minor differences were not observed. I noticed

the red in a very short time, and at that time I had little leisure to do more

than attend to the wants of my various arrivals. My description may not

be absolutely accurate as I have not had the birds in my hand. I will send

you a “lovely corpse” if I am not away when the time comes, may it be

long in coming as these are quite the most amusing birds I have ever kept.



