72 BED AND BLUE MAGAW. 



Mr. Wiener's account of his experience with this bird and its fellow, 

 which forms the subject of our next chapter, is brief and to the point: 

 "The Macaws I may dismiss with a very few words. I tried a Eed 

 and Yellow Macaw, and a Blue and Yellow Macaw. A couple of ex- 

 pensive cages were demolished very quickly, and before a pair of stands 

 could be finished by the maker. The destruction of the hard wood 

 perches and mahogany uprights of their new stands afforded about 

 two days' amusement to the birds, who next peeled off the wall-paper 

 within reach, and gnawed the corner of a billiard-table. This mischief 

 was accompanied by such deafening screams, that a couple of weeks' 

 possession had quite settled my determination to get rid of the mag- 

 nificent Macaws on any terms, and never to buy one again at any 

 price. Their huge size, brilliant feathers, and loud screams are a very 

 good advertisement for a travelling menagerie, to whom amateurs had 

 better abandon these birds, unless some one would care to construct a 

 wrought-iron in-door aviary (I doubt whether bricks and mortar would 

 be proof against their beaks), to make an attempt at breeding. A pair 

 exhibited some years since at the Crystal Palace were said to have 

 laid eggs in confinement: and as Macaws always arrive in Europe 

 quite tame, it ought to be possible to breed them." 



From the foregoing account it would appear that Mr. Wiener was 

 unfortunate in his experience, and that instead of a couple of tame 

 birds, he was imposed upon, and induced to buy two, caught when 

 adult, which, as Bechstein well observes, "are savage and untractable, 

 and would only stun one with their unbearable cries, the faithful in- 

 terpreters of their different passions." 



"Yes", writes Mr. Gredney, who, by the bye, calls this bird "the 

 Military Macaw", "an old trapped Macaw affords plenty of f raw ma- 

 terial' upon which the advocates of 'moral suasion', as a means of 

 taming wild creatures, might very well try their hands. I knew one 

 bird that defied every effort made to tame him, and he killed a bull 

 terrier that shared his place in the stables: you could not live in the 

 house with him! Both his wings were broken in this terrific battle, 

 and a pretty spectacle the place presented when the man went as 

 usual to feed him in the morning. There laid poor Tyke dead, with 

 his throat torn open, the bird, covered with blood and almost featherless, 

 stood by, with distended and drooping wings, a perfect scarcecrow, 

 shrieking at intervals, either in spite or pain. What was to be done 

 with the creature? Kill him, every one said but the man who looked 

 after the bird; so his belief that the injuries would tame him saved 

 his (the bird's) life: and the cripple was consequently shut up in a 

 pig-stye. His wings got well, the bones growing out of place, but 



