Correspondence



29



and every other possible step was taken to make the inquiry a truly

national one.


The result has been the publication of a most valuable Report,

which gives not only the present status of the Great Crested Grebe

but its complete history and its habits. It is not a dry-as-dust set of

statistics but a document of absorbing interest to everyone who is

•interested in our native birds, and we cannot praise too highly the

thoroughness with which this inquiry has been carried out. It reflects

the greatest credit upon the organizers and their very large body of

helpers.


D. S-S.



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.


THE WAYS OF PARRAKEETS


Birds appear to be in no way inferior to the human race in the totally

unexpected (and unpleasant) things they sometimes do !


For more than eight years I have had a breeding pair of Yellow-ramped

Parrakeets which reached me when about eighteen months old. They have been

the most prolific and devoted couple of Broadtails in my collection. They

have reared literally dozens of offspring and I have never seen the slightest

approach to a quarrel between them, the cock not even making his mate

get out of his way as most of his race and sex do out of the breeding season.

Last July, when their second brood were out of the nest and they themselves

were moulting, the cock suddenly started to bully the hen. The removal of

the young birds and the nests distracted his thoughts and caused him to

behave normally for about six weeks, when he again attacked her and mauled

her badly, so that we had to cut his wing. Fighting is so much part of a

Broadtail 5 s life when at liberty and he indulges in it so often and so

unnecessarily in spite of running no small danger of fatal wounds, that one

wonders whether the monotony of long years of enforced peace with no other

company than that of the wife of his bosom, may not produce some kind of

complex in Ms nature ! The only alternative explanation would seem to be

that X, encouraged by the success of the equally unexpected assault he

inspired the Amboina King to make upon her mate, turned his mischievous

attention to the most model couple in the collection to see how he could

upset the even tenor of their lives !


My hen Brown’s Parrakeet, after rearing four fine young ones, fell slightly

ill and had to be taken into the hospital for treatment. Her mate has the

unpleasant personal idiosyncrasy that he always insists on killing his partner

if she has been separated from Mm even for the shortest period, and he has

to have his wing cut to restrain him from Ms unamiable intentions.


This time I thought I would try if by a manoeuvre I could avoid the usual

scene and the infliction of the usual penalty. He had been living for some



