60 The Marquess of Tavistock—Breeding of the Hooded Parrakeet


The hen of my present pair is one of four who had lived at Keston

in enforced spinsterhood for a number of years. For a time she was

paired to a Red-rump, but although they were quite friendly they did

not nest. When my first hen died she was sent to console the widowed

cock.


I made every effort to induce her to adapt herself to British seasons,

removing her nest firmly in September when she was just beginning

to take an interest in it in the hope of forcing her to moult earlier and

make an earlier start the next summer. This plan answers with some

hens but not with this one. Kef using to be discouraged, in 1931 she

deposited her eggs on the sand tray on the floor of the aviary shelter

and sat on them resolutely but, though two were fertile, they failed

to hatch. She made another attempt in the same place in January

but got egg-bound with her second egg and on being returned to the

aviary fortunately gave up further thoughts of breeding. In February

she and her mate raised my hopes of an early moult by dropping a

few feathers but they never properly got down to the job and went at

it again in earnest at the end of May, wasting June, July, and August.


In September she again laid on the floor of the shelter and sat like

an Albatross on the top of a raised mound of peat. This time she hatched

two young but they died almost at once although their crops were full

of food. In January she made another attempt, got egg-bound as before,

and faithfully repeated all her tactics of 1931.


This year I surrendered to the point of allowing her a wooden nest-

box with a coco-nut husk bottom when the return of autumn made

outdoor nesting no longer possible. I did not for a moment expect her

to do any good as I have never reared decent young even of much

hardier species in an aviary shelter with artificial heat. Rather to my

surprise the three eggs all hatched. Still more to my surprise the young

did not immediately die. I was giving the parents, instead of ordinary

drinking water, a small tea-cup of water to which had been added some

drops of orange juice and some raw yolk of egg. To the use of

this preparation, which has given remarkably good results with other

broods, I attribute most of my success. The parents in the way of food

had spray millet, of which they are very fond, white millet, hemp,

sunflower and canary, some dry, some thrown on the earth in the



