4 Captain H. S. Stokes—The Breeding of the Senegal Touraco



apples and grapes. They also condescend to eat a well-made rice

pudding, which usually and surreptitiously finds its way to them from

the luncheon table when I am at home. At this time we also gave

them a little diluted Nestle’s milk with sponge cake soaked in it. The

increasingly rapid disappearance of this and the bananas were a

pretty good guide to the progress of the young one. Both parents

fed the young by regurgitation, and after a fortnight of suspense and

excitement I was finally allowed into the aviary to watch this

performance through a crack in the bottom of the basket.


The young bird left the nest when twenty-eight days old, a little,

fluffy, black nigger. That day he climbed about among some low

branches and we shut the family indoors for the night and watched

till we were satisfied he was being properly brooded.


When five weeks old we saw him helping himself to food on the

table. He was still in black down with a good deal of white on the

wings. This white remained until he was nearly full-grown, when the

wing feathers gradually changed to the lovely carmine colours peculiar

to Touracos. Only at this stage did I dare mention his existence to

anyone, for fear he should die to spite me. But he continued to thrive,

and after I had been away for ten days I returned to find him three-

quarters grown, with crest well developed, his breast and tail already

purple, his wings still white.


This species has been bred in France by M. Delacour, but the

breeding pair were unfortunately destroyed during the German advance ;

in 1918. It has not been bred in England before, and as far as I know

is only the second species with which success has been attained in

this country.


As no coloured plate accompanies these notes a detailed description

of the bird may be useful. The Senegal Touraco is a lovely creature,

about 15 inches long ; head, neck and breast all bright grass green. ;

Back, wings, and tail glossy violet; quills, with the exception of the j

outer ones, bright crimson, with the edges and shafts black. It has i

a bare ocular patch with a band of white feathers in front and below !

the eye.


The sexes are alike and very difficult to distinguish, though perhaps

the white patch in‘front of the eye is bigger in the male than in the ;



