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The Marquis of Tavistock,



ADELAIDE PARAKEETS.


SOME NOTES AND EXPERIENCES.


By The Marquis of Tavistock.


Although not, perhaps, one of the most gorgeous members of

the brightly-clad family to which it belongs, the Adelaide Parrakeet

(.Platycercus adelaiclce ) is certainly not the least beautiful: the varied

and rather autumnal tints of its plumage, when seen to advantage,

being seldom forgotten.


It is not very easy to give an accurate description of an adult

cock Adelaide’s plumage, but some idea can be conveyed to those

who have never seen one, by saying that it has the breast and crown

of the head a rosy brick colour, the rides of the neck yellowish buff,

the rump and flanks yellowish or reddish buff and the shoulders

marked with black in the ‘hen pheasant’ pattern seen in the Rosella

and many other AustralianParrakeets. The wings are partly blue and

partly black with some buff or greenish markings, and the tail feathers

are of different shades of blue. Some hen Adelaides closely resemble

the cocks in colour, and are only distinguishable by their smaller

size and slightly duller tints. Others, however, have hardly any

green or buff about them at all, and might almost be mistaken for

small, dull-coloured Pennants. I at one time regarded these very red

birds — they always seem to be hens, I have never seen a cock, dead

or alive — as Pennant hybrids, but I am now rather inclined to think

that this is not the case, for a pair of imported Adelaides, coming

from the same district and perhaps belonging to the same brood, in

which the cock was of the buflish type and the hen very red, pro¬

duced young in which the sexes (now in full colour) are almost alike

in plumage and are indistinguishable from another imported pair in

which there is a similar absence of any marked difference in the

appearance of the male and female.


So much for the colouration of adult Adelaides : now for that

of the young. When first leaving the nest the latter are a golden

olive, yellower on the back than on the breast, with blue cheek

patches, a little red round the throat and some blue in the wings

and tail. During the course of their first autumn and winter they

tend to become rather greener, (though they are never so green as



