BLUE AND YELLOW MAGAW. 79 



The Hon. and Rev. F. G. Duttorf s account of the Blue and 

 Yellow Macaw (Ara ararauna). 



What Bechstein could have meant by saying that Blue and Yellow 

 Macaws are not good talkers I do not know; I have had four, two 

 cocks and two hens. The hens did not talk, but the cocks did, and 

 one had a talent for talking, such as I have never met with in any 

 other Parrot. It not only picked up things it heard at once, but 

 always in the tone of the person who said it. It was impossible to 

 doubt whom it was imitating; the only doubt, if it was not mimicking 

 oneself, was, was it the Macaw or the persons themselves? I parted 

 with it, however, first because I could not trust its temper, and secondly 

 because it never would leave a bough it had flown to, if it could help 

 it; what may have startled it in its several flights I know not, but 

 had it been left alone, it would several times have starved to death 

 sooner than take wing again. "When therefore it had flown out of the 

 garden, it did not, like the others, return when hungry, but always 

 had to be fetched back, and as this gave considerable trouble when 

 it settled high up in a large tree, I got rid of it. I do not think 

 its temper would have been bad, but I put it in the cage with the 

 Eed and Yellow, and it was marital jealousy that made it peck at one. 

 Precisely the same thing happened with the other Blue and Yellow 

 cock bird. He had the best of tempers, any one might do anything 

 they liked with him; but after he was put in the cage with the Eed 

 and Yellow, he made efforts to drive people away. Curiously enough 

 neither of the cock birds was a particularly good flyer, but the two 

 hens were as strong on the wing as Hawks, a hurricane would have 

 been nothing to them, and it was magnificent to see the dashes and 

 turns they would make on the wing. They all four had very different 

 characters: "Frank", the good talker, had evidently left his heart for 

 mankind in Brazil. He made distinctions, but he loved no one. "Bob", 

 the other cock, was, I think, a little "wanting", anyone might do 

 what they pleased with him, and he would come to a coal-scuttle as 

 soon as to his master. "Harry", as one hen was called, was timid and 

 would only come to myself. I parted with her because she would 

 always settle on just the very leaders of my firs, etc. But I always 

 have regretted having done so. Her wing was cut when she made this 

 her practice, and no doubt had I waited till it was quite grown, she 

 would have returned home from her excursions in a more "conve- 

 nable" manner. As for "Jenny", the other hen, she was a splendid 

 specimen, as a bird, but she was the incarnation of greediness and 



