BED-WINQED PABBAEEET. 73 



a single pair, for doubtless the Red-wings, like all other birds and 

 animals, vary in their several dispositions; one individual is meek and 

 good-tempered, and another haughty and overbearing: there are ex- 

 ceptions to every rule, and the amateur who acquires a new bird, or 

 a new pair of birds, would do well to watch them, and study their 

 disposition, before turning them out among the established inmates of 

 his aviary: and even when he thinks he has become thoroughly ac- 

 quainted with them, he will do well to observe them carefully for some 

 time, and watch their behaviour towards their fellow captives, when he 

 has at last made up his mind to restore them to relative liberty in 

 the aviary or bird-room. 



This Parrakeet was classed by Swainson with the Lories, but erro- 

 neously so, for its food, in its native wilds, consists of seeds of all 

 sorts, berries and insects belonging chiefly to the beetle kind (Goh- 

 optera). Swainson asserted that it also partook of honey and pollen 

 from the Eucalypti j but, if so, these are not indispensable to its well- 

 being, as in the case of the Lories proper and the Trichoglossi, or 

 Australian Lorikeets. 



The food in confinement we have already mentioned, and upon it 

 this bird will live in the house for a number of years, in the enjoy- 

 ment of apparently perfect health, and certainly in the possession of 

 unimpaired beauty. 



The length of the Eed-winged Parrakeet is about twelve inches, and 

 the bird is stoutly proportioned: it is not very strong of beak, nor 

 much given to whittling; consequently, if it be desired to induce it 

 to breed, a suitable nesting place must be provided for its accommo- 

 dation, in the shape of a naturally or artificially hollowed log of wood, 

 hung up in some quiet corner of the aviary, for the Eed-wing is a 

 timid bird, which, although tolerably tame when confined within the 

 bars of a cage, soon becomes wild again when restored to comparative 

 liberty in a large aviary. 



That it is tolerably hardy is abundantly evidenced by the fact that 

 a fine male of this species has survived for several years, without water, 

 in the Parrot House of the London Zoological Society, in the Regent's 

 Park. 



A friend of ours who spent some years in Northern Queensland, 

 assured us that the Eed-wing was the commonest kind of Parrakeet 

 in that part of the country; he also said that it lived in great measure 

 on the blossoms of the "wattle-trees", a kind of mimosa, and that 

 often when he shot them the honey used to run out of their beaks in 

 a stream, and that the aborigines, when they killed one, always put 

 its head into their mouths and sucked the honey from the birds' crop. 



