On the Breeding of a Hybrid Lorikeet , etc. 189


few more Gouldians and my soft-billed birds, which comprise

Yellow-winged Sugar Birds, Blue Sugar Birds, Violet Tanagers

and a Festive Tanager (cock).


The soft-billed birds I feed with the following mixture :—

Condensed milk, Mellin’s Food and a little honey mixed together

in boiling water, with a little crumbled sponge cake added to it.

They also get plenty of bananas and grapes and a few mealworms

of which they are very fond. They are all delightfully tame,

especially the Blue Sugar Birds, which invariably fly on to my

shoulders and hands directly I enter their aviary, in the hope of

receiving a mealworm or a grape.


Of all the birds, I have always found the soft-billed ones

the easiest to keep in good health. They appear to feel the cold

and damp less than most of the seed-eaters, and are always in

beautiful plumage and condition, in fact I have not lost one

during the whole winter.



ON THE BREEDING OF A HYBRID LORIKEET

AND OTHER AVIARY NOTES.


By W. A. Harding, M.A., F.L.S , F.Z.S.


Some years ago there remained in one of my aviaries—the

survivors of a number of others—a fine male Swainson’s Lorikeet

and a hen Red-collared Lorikeet (Trichoglossus rubritorques). No

sooner had death deprived this pair of their noisy companions

and left them in sole possession of their abode than they began

to busy themselves with one of the nesting-boxes provided for

them. The box was not a particularly suitable one, and in order

to encourage the hen by the provision of a more natural nesting

place, a branch of a tree in my garden containing a Green Wood¬

pecker’s hole was taken down, cut to a suitable size ar.d set up in

the aviary. The cavity in the tree was some nine inches deep

and the circular entrance at the top of it was three inches in

diameter; the birds took to it at once, and after some time spent

in trimming the interior to her satisfaction, the hen began to sit.


The first attempt at nesting was unfortunate, and the faint

squeaking which announced the presence of a young one lasted



