All rights reserved. March, 1918. 
BIRD NOTES: 
THE 
JOURNAL OF THE FOREIGN BIRD CLUB. 
My Madagascar Lovebirds. 
By Mrs. A. M. Cook, F.Z.S. 
I have heard Madagascar Lovebirds called "bad-tempered 
little brutes;" with my pair this description applied mostly to the 
hen, for the cock had little time to be bad-tempered or anything 
else with his constant attendance on his dame. As a reward for 
his devotion, he often received a gentle scratching of his poll 
first on one side and then on the other (t'ide folate). This was 
pretty enough to watch, and in such moments they seemed to be 
living up to their name. For the rest he was humbly at her beck 
and call, and though they did not actually quarrel and often sat 
together very lovingly absorbed in themselves, there was much 
yet wanting to set them up as a model of congugal felicity. 
Slie was petulant, exacting, and impatient with him as a 
spoiled child, and, like many spoiled people, sometimes spiteful. 
His daily duty seemed to be to answer his lady's two 
sharp notes, to fetch seed for her and be Inirried up over it, 
too, by her querulous calls. Then they would sit quaintly feed- 
ing each other backwards and forwards. Whatever pleasure 
he may have found in the performance must have been modified 
by the fear that his toes might be well nipped by his uncertain 
spouse. 
Nor did the night bring him relief from her exactions, 
for her two sharp notes were often heard, followed by the 
scrambling of the husband down tlie wires to the seed-box like 
any old shuffler in his slippers at the bidding of a testy wife, then 
the sound of feedin"" and a little sone in the darkness. 
