My Rcd-naped Lorikeets. 
233 
with, but they would fly on to the shoulder or arm of anyone 
that entered the aviary -the utmost stranger was merely a perch 
for tliem ; strangers were a little alarmed at first when they 
received playful tweaks from their needle-pointed beaks, but 
they never drew blood, and fear soon passed into pleasure. 
They ate nearly all their fruit from the hand, and, not unduly to 
prolong the yarn, it was difficult to leave the aviary without 
bringing them out on one's shoulder; in fact this happened on 
one occasion, but they made no attempt to fly away, and 
remained on my shoulder while I re-entered the aviary, where 
T took tliem from my person and placed them on a perch. 
They did not l)reed with me ; such extremely tame birds 
rarely do, but this species has reared young on several occasions 
in a large cage in the Parrot House of the London Zoo, and 
they have bred quite freely in the aviaries of Mr. E. J. Brook. 
Their diet with me was a very varied one, but their staple 
food was ripe fruit and milk-sop; they also took some seed, and 
ate with gusto fresh seeding grass, chickweed, groundsel and 
dandelion. A bunch of flowers, mostly dandelion and garden 
marigolds, they delighted in, sucking them dry of nectar, eating 
the pollen and finally the greater portion of the flowers. 
I have had a personal acquaintance with many Red-napes, 
and I have been astonished at the individualism common to 
respective pairs of this species. My pair burrowed like rats, 
and frequently I have looked for them in vain in the aviary, only 
to see later their heads peeping out of a burrow, but directly 
they heard anyone walking in the aviary they came out at once, 
TO have a chat and so relieve the tedium of the day. To such 
an extent did they carry their burrowing propensities that I had 
to put slate and netting into the ground to prevent them bur- 
rowing from one enclosure to another. 
I fancy the pair I am writing about were hand-reared 
birds; I got them from the Australian trappers, Messrs. Payne 
and Wallace, shortly after the landing of a large consignment 
01 birds, to S'ce which I made a special journey from London 
to the " Little Zoo " at Bath. 
At the London Zoo one, if not more, hybrid was reared 
between this species and Forsten's Lorikeet {T . forstcni), 
which in plumage w'as intermediate between the two species; 
•f anything the Red-nape was the most dominant, 
