W. Shore-Bctily — My Patagonian Parrots



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MY PATAGONIAN PARROTS


By W. Shore-Baily


One day last autumn I was wandering through one of the large

West End bird stores, when my attention was called to a cage full of

Parrots. On asking the attendant what they were called he said

Patagonian Conures, and that they had only lately been landed, together

with some Blue-crowned Conures. Amongst the five birds in the cage

were two birds considerably larger than the others and of a lighter

colour. It is true that one of these birds had very few feathers on it at

all, and the other was in bad condition, but in view of their possible

rarity I decided to take the lot. On getting them home and examining

the two large ones carefully, I made them out to be C. bryoni , although

they differed in one or two important points from the description of

this bird, especially in the absence of the white band across the chest,

as described in both Seth-Smith’s and Butler’s books. The smaller

birds were also without this white band, although in all other respects

they answered to the description given in the books. The question is,

does this white band exist in either species ? It is not shown in

the capital drawing in Mr. Seth-Smith’s book, nor can I see any

trace of it in the print in Dr. Butler’s work. I wrote to the

Magazine on this subject a short time since, and it was suggested

by both Lord Tavistock and Mr. Seth-Smith that the larger

birds were hybrids. At that time I could think of no possible

cross except between “C. patagonus ” and “C. hcsmorrhous ”, but

the difficulty in my mind was the large size of my Parrots.

Dr. Graham Renshaw thought that the size of my birds did not affect

the question, mentioning the fact that the hybrid is often larger than

either of its parents ; but my experience with hybrids in birds does not

bear this out, as although I have bred many hybrids I have never had

one yet that was larger than the bigger of its parents. I have now come

to the conclusion that the smaller birds are pure “C. palagonus ”, and the

other two the offspring of a cross between the Little Macaw, “Am severa ,”

and the Blue-crowned Conure, “C. lioemorrlious Their description is

as follows : general body colour above and below, light grass-green ;

primaries, bluish-green ; a small patch on wing butts, and a garter



