Marquess of Tavistock—Further Notes for 1931



31



lost—again an unprecedented misfortune, for of the dozens of young

Barrabands I have trained for liberty not one has ever deserted his

parents when first released.


A second pair got no further than looking at the nest. The cock,

like so many aviary-bred Barrabands, would do everything but mate.

The cock of the third pair had rather a peculiar history. He was brought

up by the Sula Island King and her Crimson-wing mate together with

their own hybrid offspring, his own parents having died while he was

still an egg ! His unusual upbringing has affected his whole character

and conversation. He talks Crimson-wing and even now greatly prefers

the society of Crimson-wings, being, for a Barraband, an unusually

inattentive husband to his Barraband mate, who was my choice rather

than his. Nevertheless, when he was with her in the summer he did

his duty by his home though the only eggs in his nest that hatched were

two of a Eock Peplar. One of the young Eock Peplars died in the

nest; the other was reared and is a trained liberty bird, but is not

a good specimen. The mother of this youngster is a most idiotic bird

and a great source of trouble to her mate and myself. Every year she

ignores his entreaties and curses and refuses to look at the endless

variety of nests I submit for her approval. What she really likes doing

is laying her five eggs one by one from the perch in the shelter. This

year I shut her out of the shelter and she laid her eggs from the perch

in a corner of the flight, breaking two. Finally, by way of adding insult

to injury, she proceeded, for three weeks, to incubate, on the aforesaid

perch, the abstract idea of the five eggs, two of which were in fragments

and the other three under the Barraband !


A pair of Eedrumps at liberty reared four young cocks. They then

flew to the other side of Kent and reared two more, being caught in

late autumn by a person who sold them to a local fancier who showed

no inclination to part with them. This, again, is quite unprecedented

conduct in liberty Eedrumps, which, as long as they are paired, are

most faithful stayers.


The young cocks, while in immature plumage, were so uncivil to

the hens I turned out for them that the latter did not stay ; but as

soon as they assumed adult plumage they strayed in search of mates

as all unpaired Eedrumps do !



