Edward Boosey—The Grass Parrake ?ts—Some Facts and Fictions 123


which one imagines must always have been the least scarce member of

the Grass Parrakeet family, since it is the last to survive in any

numbers ?


For the guidance of those who are still a bit hazy as to the appearance

of the various members of the family, the following points may be of

interest.


Largest and dullest of the group is the Rock Grass. This bird is

very difficult to sex, and though a trifle larger and stouter than an

Elegant is, as a matter of fact, so precisely like one that the two might

well be merely different editions of the same bird, the only real

difference between them being that the Elegant’s very lovely golden-

green is replaced in the Rock Grass by a dark sombre olive colour.


Next to them in size (omitting the Orange-bellied, which I imagine

is nothing but a glorified Elegant) comes the Blue-winged Grass

Parrakeet. This, the least scarce of the group, bears a superficial

resemblance to an Elegant, but its green is of a less golden hue and it

has a uniform quite wide oblong patch of brilliant dark blue on the

wing instead of the Elegant’s narrow wing border of two shades of blue.


Next in size comes Bourke’s Parrakeet, which, of course, in its

harmonious blending of blue, mauve, grey and pink, and also in

many of its actions, is quite unlike the others.


Now comes the Turquoisine, which is a trifle smaller than a Bourke

and is not really like any of the others in the arrangement of its colours,

with the exception of the Splendid. The Splendid is very definitely

smaller than a Turquoisine, with the latter’s rather dark gentian blue

mask and wing-patches replaced by the deepest possible shining sapphire

blue shading near the beak almost into black ; the patches of this colour

at the border of the wings being overlaid with feathers of brilliant,

rather pale, blue. It does not possess the Turquoisine’s uneven brick-

red patch on the wings.


The most interesting discovery we have made with regard to the

Splendid is that there are obviously two separate races of the bird ;

or, at any rate, this would appear to be the case judging by two adult

cocks we have here, both imported from Australia. One of these has its

crop adorned with the more or less round red patch of about the size

of a half-crown, which appears in all the old illustrations of the bird.



