J. Delacour-—Bird Notes from Cleres



5



female. The British Museum catalogue gives the size of the female

as 2 inches longer than the male, but I have always considered my

male to be the longer and slimmer of the pair, the hen being shorter

and more thick-set.


It inhabits west Africa, where it ranges from Senegambia to the

Congo. It is a forest bird and largely frugivorous, though it also eats

leaves. Its feet are semi-zygodactyle, which means that the outer

toe is capable of being turned either backwards or forwards.


My hen Touraco laid another egg indoors during October, and again

hatched, but the parents got bored with the young, when it was three

weeks old, and it died one cold day at the beginning of December.



BIRD NOTES FROM CLERES


By J. Delacour


During the last year or more I have been so busy with different

matters, and especially with the writing of the four big volumes on

The Birds of Indo-China, that I find now that I have not sent to the

Magazine my usual notes on my birds at Cleres since 1929.


And yet so many species new to aviculture have been imported

during recent years and a few of these have come to me ! If we look

back ten years or more, how many birds which we had only dreamed

of seeing alive in our cages, aviaries, and parks, have now materialized !

If our dear former president, the late Mr. H. Astley, whom we all miss

so much, were still with us, what enthusiasm would he have shown

at the importations of species, which, in his days, were quite beyond

our avicultural hopes ! . . . But I must keep only to the few birds which

have come into my possession and I shall only speak of the novelties

which arrived at Cleres during the past two years, or which have been

bred there.


From the point of view of breeding, the weather of the last two

seasons has been especially bad, as it rarely ceased raining and was

nearly always cold and dull. It is only with very great and special

precautions that we managed to rear some young birds.


To start with the larger birds, we bred each season about ten



