Correspondence



11



though we have, of course, various losses. Many more would increase,

but I have difficulty in procuring female birds. I have been able to

obtain various new birds since our local avicultural society was started,

and as yet have not lost any of those recently acquired. Whilst in

London I saw wonderful birds at the Regents Park Zoo, which I

visited many times.


Amy B. Campbell.



SICKNESS IN RARE PARRAKEETS


I had hoped that the all too liberal experience of several years had

exhausted the supply of dangerous parrot diseases I was compelled

to become acquainted with—particularly diseases of an unpreventable

and incurable nature which attack acclimatized birds. However, a

bad summer and a new place has added another to the list—catarrhal

fever. One day in August I noticed that the Antipodes Island

Parrakeet appeared to have a discharge from the eyes and nostrils.

She may have been wrong some days before, but she was always a

bad bird to have ill, as she appeared to favour Christian Science ideas

and never departed from normal behaviour until half dead. Unlike

any other Parrakeet I have had, she would in the early stages of illness,

call, fly actively about, and stretch herself and continue to do so until

in a state of collapse.


I hoped that the trouble was only a kind of cold in the head and

put her in the warm hospital, spraying her head with glyco-thymoline

and water. She went off her seed, but ate plenty of apple and drank

plenty of egg and milk. Her bowels remained for a long time in fair

order, and she hung on to life for nearly a fortnight, but not the slightest

impression could we produce on the wretched microbe. The poor

bird’s eyes and nostrils simply poured, and before she died her eyelids

were closed and swollen as in a bad case of eye disease. About a

fortnight later I was alarmed and disgusted to notice that my best

breeding hen King, a few aviaries away from the Norfolk Island's

late abode, had started the discharge from one eye and nostril. She

was in splendid bodily condition, very lively and very indignant at



