34 
COOKATIEL. 
males can be distinguisbed from their sisters by having a perceptible 
shade of yellow on the head and face. 
In their wild state these birds seldom have more than two broods 
in the season, but in domesticity, when they are relieved of all appre- 
hension on the score of food, they keep on breeding pretty well all 
the year round, except in the depth of winter; but the young that 
are hatched late in the autnmn, or in the beginning of spring, are not 
always successfully reared. 
Ihe total length of the Cockatiel is eleven inches, of which the tail 
measures live. 
Like all the Parrot tribe, the Cockatiel makes its nest in the hollow 
bough of a tree, where it lays a considerable number of eggs, seldom 
less than five, often seven, and not unfrequently nine, which it hatches 
in twenty-one days from the date of the deposition of the last of the 
batch. The male is a most attentive father, sitting on the eggs all 
from five or six o^ clock in the morning, during summer, to four 
or five in the evening, seldom leaving them for more than a few 
minutes occasionally to get a little food; bnt when he thinks he has 
done his duty he comes off, and if the hen, as sometimes happens, 
appears unwilling to take up her position in the nest, a grand scolding 
match takes place, and now and then a regular fight. “It is too bad!^^ 
he screams, “there, I have been sitting all day, and you have been 
out enjoying yourself in the sunshine, and now, when I am faint and 
hungry, and the daylight almost gone, you will not do your duty, but 
let the precious eggs get cold ! it is too bad I declare, go in at once, 
0 wife, go in I say.'’^ And if madarne does not at once take up her 
post on the eggs, he chases her about, pecking her sharply, and scolding 
vehemently all the time; until at last, fatigued by his importunities, if 
not obeying the call of duty, she pops into the box, settles herself down 
on her eggs, and he, giving a congratulatory chuckle, flies off to the 
seed-pan, and makes up for lost time by eating voraciously for several 
minutes, when he repairs to the water-bottle and has a good drink, 
then he plumes himself for a little while, and then it is time to go 
to bed. 
When the young are hatched, however, the lady spends most of her 
time with them for the first two or three days, during which period 
she alone appears to feed them; then, as the youngsters get stronger 
and bigger, she pays less and less attention to them, and the purveying 
to their wants devolves more and more upon their father; for usually, 
sometimes long before they have left the nest, she begins to lay again, 
and these eggs are actually hatched by their elder brothers and sisters, 
as much as by the parent birds themselves. 
