Breeding Besulis at the Keaton Foreign Bird Farm



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we hope to keep them for many years yet, to live out the remainder of

their lives in peace and comfort. They must by now possess a vast

number of descendants.


Bourke’s did quite fairly well. One of our breeding pairs, however,

had trouble with their first nest which succumbed to a form of nestling

diarrhoea when old enough to have their eyes open and be starting

to feather. The cause remained for some time obscure, until the same

thing began to appear in the second nest, in the same aviary. We then

discovered that the parent Bourke’s, usually so indifferent to all green

food—except occasionally flowering ' grass—had suddenly decided to

eat considerable quantities of dandelion leaves, thistle, etc., and other

more or less laxative weeds, growing in the open run. These, though

apparently quite harmless to the old birds, proved altogether too-

strong when fed to the nestlings, and the diarrhoea ceased when the

run was cleared of all but a patch of flowering Boa annua grass, and the

rest of the brood was successfully reared.


Individual pairs of Bourke’s have their own ideas as to what

constitutes the best baby food: some like hemp while others prefer

sprouting oats and ignore the former completely, some pairs too will

partake of much more green food than others.


A single cock Bourke’s, graciously lent to us for the breeding season

by His Majesty the King, was mated, in default of a hen of his own

species, to a Turquoisine. Unfortunately the Bourke 3 s started to moult

immediately he was put into an outdoor aviary, while his wife promptly

went to nest and laid five eggs, all of which proved to be infertile ;

but as the cock was moulting so heavily at the time it was hardly a fair

test of him as a stock bird. The Bourke’s recovered from his moult

while his wife was sitting on the clutch of infertile eggs and by the time

she was due to lay again was in breeding condition and so attentive

to her that there seemed every prospect of a brood of interesting hybrids.

Tragedy, however, attended this nest, as the hen was found to have died

in her nest-box when she was presumed to be sitting again. She had

laid two eggs. His Majesty’s Bourke’s is now with one of our young

ones of his own species, bred here this season.


Elegants were again single brooded, as appears to be invariably

the case with this species. Blue-wings., on the other hand, produced



