Correspondence, Notes, etc.



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biscuit sopped in scalded milk, and squeezed rather dry, but it would touch

nothing of the kind, neither would it drink; for these Parrakeets seem to

drink hardly at all; so that, in spite of what some bird authorities say as to

the uselessness of physic etc. for sick birds, I determined to try something,

as I felt sure the bird would succumb if I didn’t, for he had been ailing

some four or five da}’S, and was daily growing worse ; losing flesh rapidly.


First of all I administered a dose, two to three drops, of warm castor

oil. An hour afterwards I gave two or three drops of warm milk, having

put into the milk a soupcon of good brandy. The bird was very weak. I

kept him as warm as possible, and at night placed him in a basket on a hot-

water bottle of gutta perclia, well wrapped round with two pieces of flannel

so that the heat should not be too much for the Parrakeet, and also so that

it should be longer retained. It was indeed still quite warm in the morning.


Twice during the night, with that instinct of being able to wake one¬

self when one has ordered one’s brain to remember something particular

even in sleep, I arose, warmed some milk and administered three drops.

The next morning the little Bonrke was better; not so puffed out, and ran

out of the basket almost briskly. I continued the treatment through that

day, and then left him for the night in his cage, with a lamp burning close

by, giving him canary seed into which I had mixed some olive oil; for

nothing but seed would he touch, and he had subsisted two days and a

night, only on the drops of brandied milk that I had put down his throat

on my linger.


For three or four more days he looked decidedly poorly, but better;

and then I changed the olive oil in the canary seed, for cod-liver oil: of

course a very little goes a long way. And I also forced him to drink a little

tepid water, into which I had put a few drops of glycerine and two or three

of ipecac. And he recovered! Hubert D. Asteey.



DOVES WITH TWO NESTS AT THE SAME TIME.


Sir, —Is it usual for birds to have two nests and for the cock and hen

to sit on each nest at the same time ?


My Talpacoti Doves have done so. The hen first had a nest in some

bushes near the door, and every time one went in to feed the birds it would

fly up and so leave the nest. It then laid two eggs in an old nest close by,

which no sooner did the cock bird see than he at once went and sat on

them, and the hen on the other nest close by.


This is not the only instance I have noticed, as the Australian

Pigeons have done exactly the same thing. The hen in this case laid in

one nest, and then took it into her head to lay in an old nest which the

cock bird took possession of. Unfortunately in both cases nothing came of

the eggs the cock sat on.


I thought at first it was because the Talpacoti Dove was so often



