Correspondence, Notes, etc. 157


THE COLOUR OF YOUNG PENNANT PARRAKEETS.


Mr. T. N. Wilson contributes an interesting article on the breeding of

Pennant’s Parrakeet, to the current number of Bird Notes, in which he

gives some valuable notes on the colouring of the five young birds on

leaving the nest. He writes: “ Two of the five were olive-green on the

back and breast, with no black apparent anywhere, and crimson only on

the crown, throat and vent, with just a dash of crimson on the rump.

Their cheeks and the outer edges of their wings were blue as in the adult.

The other three were similar in colouring and marking to their parents,

except that the black feathers on the back, which in the parents are edged

with crimson, were edged with green, and the crimson on the breast, rump,

and head was duller and had a greenish hue.


“ There must be some reason,” continues the author, “ for this

marked difference in colouring between young from the same nest, and at

present my theory, founded on a limited experience only, is that it is

sexual, and that the birds with no black feathers are hens and the others

cocks. This theory has so far been supported b}' a post mortem, which un¬

fortunately became necessary in the case of one of the three with black

feathers, which flew against the rafters of the aviary, and died of concussion

of the brain.”


It would seem however that the three young birds which left the nest

with the red plumage characteristic of the adults were abnormally pre¬

cocious, since the young of Platycercus elegans have been described by

several good observers, none of which have mentioned individuals coloured

like those above described. Gould states that ‘‘much variation exists

between youth and maturity; during the first autumn the young birds are

clothed in a plumage of nearly uniform green ; to this succeeds a parti¬

coloured livery of scarlet, blue, and green, which colouring is continually

changing until the full plumage is assumed.”


Mr. A. J. Campbell mentions a nest of this species containing eight

eggs, of which the parents were both in immature dress, showing that this

species sometimes even breeds before it has assumed the red of maturity.


P. elegans appears to be subject to considerable variation as regards

the colour of its immature plumage and the time occupied between the

nestling stage and the assumption of the adult coloration. We know that

the so-called P. mastersianus is merely an abnormally-coloured variety of

P. elegans, and a discussion which took place in this Magazine some years

ago tended to show that thei'e exists a race of Pennants (possibly hybrids

between P. elegans and P. adelaidensis) in which the plumage of the female,

after she had reached maturity, differed considerably from that of the male,

a difference which is not apparent in the majority of srecimens of P. elegans.


That a sexual difference does exist in the colouring of the young

birds was noticed by the Rev. C. D. Farrar when he bred the species in

1899, for he wrote “ The hens only have a carmine crown on the top of their



