at the Keston Foreign Bird Farm , Season 1933 51


for it must be remembered that immature Hooded take far longer

than tbe young Red-rumps to assume full adult plumage. They are

wonderful mimics of their neighbours and, like most mongrels and

hybrids, extremely lively and intelligent.


Ring-necks bred successfully, a particularly fine pair going to

nest almost immediately on arrival here, and rearing three young

ones. Young Cockatiels also left the nest after one false start.


Of the Grass Parrakeets, Turquoisines, Elegants, Bourke’s, and

Blue-wings were all reared, though the two former did less well than

usual, for various more or less unpreventable reasons, such as a hen

refusing to sit, or young ones dying in the shell just as they were due to

hatch (as in the case of all but one of a brood of Elegants), or a

particularly prolific hen dying while incubating her second clutch.

On the other hand, nine young Bourke’s were reared from two pairs,

and the same number of young from a single pair of Blue-wings, this

being, we imagine, a record number in one year from a single pair of

this species.


The arrival—too late to breed—must be recorded of a pair of the

excessively rare and beautiful little Splendid Parrakeet. Probably

very few aviculturists have ever seen this species alive, but it is

worth going a long way to see. The hen is not unlike a hen Turquoisine,

but the cock is far and away the most beautiful of all the Grass Parra¬

keets, with his blue mask shading to an almost sapphire colour, in

striking contrast with the rich cherry-red of his breast. Incidentally,

this red breast-patch is much more extensive than it was usually

represented to be in the old coloured plates, nor are they correct in

portraying it as an almost completely circular, hard-edged blob of

colour. Actually, the two colours are merged into each other, by small

oblong red spots, which rapidly dwindle in size as they overlap into

the yellow of the lower breast.


Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all about the Splendid,

certainly the one that most strikes anyone who has kept other members

of the Grass Parrakeet tribe, is the extraordinary unlikeness of his

voice to that of other members of his family. In appearance he is so

much like a tremendously glorified edition of a Turquoisine, that

one instinctively expects him to utter but a slight variation of the



