Correspondence



331



The other Parrot was brought to me by a working man who lived

near here. He was feeding his chickens one morning and was surprised

to see the Parrot fly down and feed with them.


He asked me to purchase the bird. I said I would try to find

the owner first, but we did not succeed in this. It was a beautiful

cock Alexandrine Bock Parrot, and proved to be one of the tamest

birds I ever had.


I received a letter a short time since from my brother in south-west

Texas, saying that a pair of the smallest kind of Humming Birds had

built a nest in a cluster of blue rose-trees in the garden near the sleeping

porch which I occupied on the two occasions when staying at his

house. I am hoping to hear further about the nesting of these

interesting birds.


James B. Housden.



THE BBEEDING OF YIOLET-EAEED WAXBILLS


The full reference to the breeding of these Waxbills in Germany

mentioned by a South African member in our August number (p. 199)

is a long article in the German periodical devoted to foreign bird culture,

Vogel Ferner Lander , Heft i, Band vi (1932), p. 24, in which the successful

breeder, Herr Thiess, of Zwenkau, gives a full account of the event.


After several failures in the early summer of 1931 in which the birds

got as far as young hatched but dying in the nest, their owner finished

the season with three young reared from two broods (apparently from

two pairs), and writing at the end of January, 1932, describes the three

as one cock and two hens all fully coloured and almost exactly like their

parents. The whole account is well worth study in spite of being

difficult to read—too difficult in fact for me—and for its translation

I am indebted to Mr. A. E. Daniels.


It would be interesting to discover who was actually the first to

succeed, Herr Thiess or one of the South African aviculturists mentioned

in the note, to which I refer above ? Perhaps one of them will let us

have particulars and dates of his success.



E. H.



