116



Correspondence



BREEDING THE GUIANA PARROTLET


The most interesting event of the 1933 breeding season in my aviaries

was the breeding of Guiana Parrotlet,


These miniature parrots I find quite peaceful with small finches, but

very spiteful towards any other of the parrot-like family. Had I not removed

them from one aviary they would have been the death of a pair of Fischus

Lovebirds.


The nest-box used was the upright pattern budgerigar box. Four eggs

were laid, three hatched but died at three or four days old. Noticing a strong

musty smell I put the nest-box out in the open: before doing so, I fixed a

block of wood 3i in. square to the bottom and arranged a tin about

6 in. square so that the block stood in water and provided a certain

amount of dampness to the nest.


The second round, again, four eggs were laid, three hatched ; two young

reared to maturity and again they went to nest this time rearing three.


As regards feeding, the young were fed almost entirely on spray millet and

green food, the staple food being canary, Indian and white millet, sunflower,

and a little hemp. All live food was refused.


Wishing you and the Society the best of health and luck for 1934.


Thos. Pembleton.



MILK


I have a little Canary-winged Parrakeet in a cage in my dining-room

and late this autumn the little bird got very seedy, in fact it looked as if it

was just going to die. It had ceased to take an interest in anything and sal¬

on its perch shivering with head under wing. It was in a miserably poor

condition with feathers all wrong. It looked to one as if it wanted some

nourishing food besides the dry seeds that these birds eat, so every evening

I made up a dessert-spoonful of creamy milk with a little fruit juice, such

as apple or plum or anything that was going. The bird took an interest in

this at once and even the next day there was a decided improvement. I kept

on with this diet every evening and in a short time the Parrakeet was as

lively and as noisy as ever. I am certain when I took the matter in hand the

bird had only a day or two to live. I now give it this milk food three or four

times a week, it seems to thrive on it.


W. H. Workman.



THE PARROT BAN


Is it not high time that the Members of the Avicultural Society and the

Fellows of the Zoological Society joined forces and approached the Govern¬

ment with a view to having this wretched restriction repealed. Surely between

the two societies pressure could be brought to bear on the powers that be ?

It is high time that something was done to reverse what was really a newspaper

stunt with, I presume, the Buckmaster crowd in the background. Now

that we are to lose the chance of getting British birds for our aviaries perhaps

as a quid pro quo we might be allowed to purchase in our shops Parrots,

Parrakeets, and Lovebirds as heretofore. It is simply a monstrous thing

that the liberty of the subject is being interfered with at every turn and

yet we are never done boasting about British Freedom ! I understand that



