ROSELLA. 
after. They sometimes eat the inner dried berry, but it is not sweet. In my 
notes I said that Psephotus hcematonotus was the only parrot which was 
destructive to blossoming fruit trees. I find that at present (30/8/08) 
P. eximius is proving himself very destructive to all the trees, whereas 
generally P. hcematonotus confined itself to almond blossoms alone. For the 
past month there have been enormous flocks of both these species here. We 
are having to shoot P. eximius on account of its raids on the blossoms. On 
July 18th, 1908, I noticed that it was eating the seeds of the Gooseberry 
cucumber ( Cucumis myriocarpis) , commonly called Chinese melon. This 
plant is an introduction from the Cape and is a decided pest, especially on 
cultivated ground. If stock eat too much of it especially in droughts, when 
there is no grass, they die. So the parrot does good in eating it.” 
Mr. A. H. Wheelwright forwarded me the following account : “In life 
the sexes of these birds are not difficult to distinguish as the male looks distinctly 
larger than his mate although measurements do not justify the appearance. 
He is also brighter in coloration while the red of the head extends further 
down the neck. In the female the red is not so bright and the green of the 
back comes almost to the base of the skull, while the general colour effect all 
over the body is less pronounced. The iris, bill, cere, feet and claws in both 
sexes are exactly alike and there is no seasonal change of colour. The young 
birds in their first plumage strongly resemble the female, but in their case the 
red of the head is more orange (so that at the moult the new feathers show with 
a distinctly different colour) and the green of the back and neck extends often 
to the crown of the head. The cheek feathers also, instead of being white are 
pale pink. In flight the young show two clear, though narrow, white bars on 
the under-surface of the wings. These wing-bars extend over both primaries 
and secondaries, and are not reproduced at the moult. The first feathers to 
lose the bars are the four outer primaries. The bill of the young birds when 
they first leave the nest is a clear yellow, but this very soon changes to the 
steel grey of the adults, the change taking place from the tip and is completed 
before the first moult. When the young birds begin to move about they of 
course have perfect tail-feathers, while the adults at this season are getting 
decidedly ragged, their tail-feathers often looking as if they had had little 
chips nipped out of them. At all seasons they feed largely upon the ground, 
living chiefly on small seeds, but they do immense damage among fruit crops, 
nipping little bits out of the fruit just as it starts ripening, and among apples 
particularly nipping through the stalks and dropping hundreds to the ground. 
During autumn and winter they go largely in flocks, but in spring these split 
up into pairs and separate. When the birds are in pairs, if the cock is shot, 
the hen displays great concern and returns to find him, but if the hen is shot 
357 
