RED-BACKED PARROT. 
This bird has a pleasing whistling note, almost approaching to a song, 
which is poured forth both while perching on the branches of the trees and while 
flying over the plains.” 
Not a great deal has been recorded, and very little information added, 
since Gould’s day in connection with this species, though it is still regarded as 
common in a few localities. 
Captain S. A. White has written me : Psephotus hcematonotus is found 
plentifully in the coastal belts of South Australia up to two hundred or two 
hundred and fifty miles inland, when it disappears. They seem to have a 
preference for open timbered country and spend much of their time upon the 
ground, over which they move very rapidly in search of grass seeds, etc. They 
were very numerous at the Reedbeds a few years ago, but have now disappeared : 
this is owing, I feel sure, to the imported English Starling ( Sturnus vulgaris ) 
having taken up all their nesting hollows and driven the parrots away. They 
lay four or five, sometimes six, white eggs upon the decayed wood of a hollow 
lime : the nesting time is September and October. Their call is a very pleasing 
one and when a number of these birds are sitting upon a dead tree their 
chattering to one another is very musical. They are not an aggressive parrot 
by any means, in fact quite lovable in their ways, which no doubt is the means 
of their being driven out by the Starling. Some few years ago a skin disease 
seems to have attacked the birds in the ranges, all the feathers in some instances 
fell off the birds and they were wiped out in some districts.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby’s notes read : “In looking through my collection I see 
that I have skins of this species from Jamestown and Crystal Brook each about 
150 miles north of Adelaide, from Tor Downs, a sheep station on the river Darling 
and from the district within a twenty mile radius of Adelaide. In 1886, I 
saw large flocks near Ballarat in Victoria. In the same year they were very 
numerous on the Adelaide Plains, settling in flocks of a score or more in the 
large Red Gum trees in the very suburbs of the city. At Mount Barker on the 
eastern side of the Adelaide Hills it was up to the year 1888 quite common to 
see flocks of twenty to thirty, but in that year this species was attacked with a 
strange disease : after moulting the birds were unable to grow their feathers 
again, and I well remember seeing numbers of naked birds running about in 
the grass at Mount Barker just like mice. I caught some and found the parrots 
otherwise in good condition, no doubt they were just as able to get their food, 
grass seeds and other seeds, as before, but they fell an easy prey to cats and other 
rapacious animals. The result was that for nearly twenty years throughout 
the Adelaide Hills and Plains and probably for a radius of a hundred or more 
miles this bird was almost extinct. I am glad to say now that for several 
years this species has been steadily increasing : we often see small flocks in the 
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