Aviculture in Paraguay.



185



Lopmrtyx californicus. Laid, but did not sit.


Thus, of the seventy forms or thereabouts which have either

built, laid, or both, in my aviaries, only twenty have been success¬

fully reared. Had I kept fewer birds and in outdoor aviaries only, I

do not doubt that I should have bred quite double that number.

At the same time, in spite of all our successful friends may say and

think respecting luck in breeding ; the fact that many birds difficult

to breed have been reared in aviaries more crowded and smaller than

mine, looks suspiciously like sheer luck: on the other hand it is just

conceivable that, when the owner (as in my case) looks after his

birds himself, they may become too comfortable, fat, and lazy, to

trouble about rearing families. I have heard bird-owners say, that

a day of starvation occasionally is as good for birds as for dyspeptic

human beings ; but I should not like to put it to the test.


It is an odd thing that those bird-owners who laugh at the

idea of success being more or less a matter of luck, do themselves

occasionally speak of having had an unlucky season : it is perhaps

natural to think that another’s misfortunes are the result of care¬

lessness and one’s own of sheer ill-luck.



AVICULTURE IN PARAGUAY.


By Lord Brabourne.


An “ embarras de richesses ” will beset any attempt at

aviculture in Paraguay. It is enough for it to be merely known that

an interest is taken in birds and apparently every boy for miles

round forsakes the daily routine of his life in the mistaken pursuit

of every bird, from a King Vulture to a Humming Bird.


The spot, to which these notes refer, was situated 27 miles

north of Villa Rica (the second town of Paraguay) and but a few

hundred yards or so from absolutely virgin forest ; across this small

distance nothing but forest primeval and uninhabited intervened

between the Parana River 100 miles to the westward.


In a country where all the world outside the towns lives in

open thatched huts and where houses in the European sense of the

word are unknown, aviculture must necessarily be rather a haphazard



