Sydney Porter—Notes on the Barer Foreign Softbills 181



rarities from that part of the globe, including five Norfolk Island

Parrakeets, so I suppose that in a few months’ time I shall finish up

with about as many birds as I had before.


The present chapter mainly concerns birds which for the most

part have passed into other hands.


Not having had a great deal of garden space at my old house,

owing to a very badly laid-out garden where I could not erect aviaries

for breeding purposes, I was somewhat restricted in the species which

I kept, though my people would no doubt say otherwise ! But having

moved some time ago into a house where I had an orchard of over

half an acre at my disposal I was freer to choose my birds, but once

having made a choice I was reluctant to change. The rarer exotic

softbills have always been the birds I have kept and even now they

still continue to be my favourites. True, they are a great deal of

trouble and can never be left to the tender mercies of an employee

no matter how much he may evince a liking for birds. So owing to

my brother’s being equally interested in my feathered family I have

not been so tied as I should otherwise have been, for all foreign softbills

require unremitting attention, as only those who have kept them can

testify.


In the following chapter I offer the reader a few notes on a few of

my rarer birds, whose acquisition was an event in my avicultural

career as they are seldom seen in the market and only upon rare

occasions offered for sale.


The Abyssinian Coucal or Lark-heeled Ground Cuckoo


To the ordinary man in the street and perhaps to a great many

bird-keepers the word “ Coucal ” may mean anything, so I think

it is better to give these birds their old though rather cumbersome

name, the “ Lark-heeled Ground Cuckoos,” which at once places them.

Though their relationship with the real Cuckoos is not so apparent

from a skin, the general demeanour of the live bird at once places it

in near relationship to the Cuckoos proper.


Not a great deal has been written about these strange semi-

terrestrial Cuckoos for they have never been common subjects in

aviculture, being only very occasionally brought to this country, and



