The Marquess of Tavistock—The Breeding of Lutino Ringnecks 237


they had picked up rat poison but a post-mortem examination revealed

a virulent form of pneumonia. In due course the Alexandrine hatched

the orphan eggs and immediately killed the young ones. She had

incubated infertile clutches so long that I believe she regarded it as

a shocking and unnatural event that eggs should produce tiny pink

monstrosities and did her best to hush up the unpleasant affair !


About the same time the old lutino was due to hatch and I looked

into the nest. Another tragedy ! Tiny mangled corpses minus beaks

and feet. I knew that the hen was a good mother and would not be

guilty of this outrage so the blame must fall on her disreputable husband

with the ragged neck. He doubtless had murdered his former offspring

by the lutino-bred hen the previous season. The next year I put the

ragged cock with the only really good lutino-bred hen I had reared in

the fixed aviaries, intending to remove him before the eggs hatched

and run him with the lutino hen, also for a limited period. The lutino-

bred duly vanished into her nest-box. (To give the cock his due he

is an attentive husband to any lady of his race whatever his sins may

be as a parent.) After a time when I judged it wise to change the cock

I looked into the nest. No eggs, no hen. I hunted everywhere for a

corpse and found nothing. She had vanished into thin air and to this

day I do not know what became of her.


I tried the rough-necked cock with the lutino hen for several more

years but had no luck. Sometimes the young were dead in the shell.

Sometimes they died soon after hatching, in some cases through my

fault for I put the nest in the shelter instead of in the open flight.

Finally, the old lady started having trouble with egg-binding. Then she

missed a season with a catarrhal discharge from one nostril, and after

that she stopped laying, though every spring she retired into her nest

and for weeks and weeks spent a soothing time of retreat incubating

the memories of the past—a habit I find very common with ancient

dames of her genus !


I was now left with two cocks and a hen lutino-bred green reared

in movable aviaries and two hens bred in fixed aviaries, one a big

bird but a poor flier, the other small and also a poor flier. The small

hen I sometimes tried with the rough-necked cock but she was

terribly clumsy with her eggs and year after year contrived to crack



