366 David Seth-Smith—The Keston Foreign Bird Farm


of Rosellas, Browns, Bourkes, Elegants, Many-colours, Turquoisines,

Blue-wings, Stanleys, Barrabands, Ring-necks ; Swainson’s Lorikeets ;

Peach-faced, Nyasa, Black-cheeked and Fischer’s Lovebirds, and

hybrids between a cock Red-rump and a hen Hooded Parrakeet.


I have mentioned only the aviaries for the rarer Parrakeets ; there

are no less than 200 other aviaries for Budgerigars, Finches, Waxbills,

etc., and in these have been reared this year Red- and Black-headed

Gouldians, Bichenos and Ringed Finches, Rufous-tails, Green

Avadavats and Silver-bills, Long-tailed, Hecks and Masked Grass-

finches ; Cherry Finches and Bengalese. The lastof these prove very

valuable foster-parents for other Finches, a fact which has led to the

construction of a special Bengalese House, a most useful structure

containing rows of 'metal cages, each housing a pair of Bengalese

busily engaged in incubating eggs or rearing young, perhaps their own,

but more likely those of some rarer Finch or Waxbill.


Budgerigar enthusiasts will find at Keston some of the best examples

of the various coloured varieties. There are some 2,000 Budgerigars

on the farm, and those that took my fancy most were some Yellows of

a wonderful hue—lovely golden birds, with not the faintest trace of

green in their plumage.


But when one has seen all these aviaries, with their varied and

rare occupants, there is still the most interesting house of all to

inspect—the Acclimasition House, a brick building some 36 by 30 ft.,

lighted by skylights fitted with Vita-glass, and warmed in winter by

a very modern type of radiator, heated by an anthracite stove which

is thermostatically controlled. This house contains five aisles, each

6 by 30 ft., and has room for 100 cages which are 2 ft. 6 in. by 2 ft.

by 1 ft. 6 in. These are of metal, and any two can, by moving

a partition, be thrown into one, making a cage 5 feet long, which

is very useful for such birds as Parrakeets.


Owing to the Parrot ban the Keston Foreign Bird Farm are, of

course, precluded from selling any but British-bred Parrots, but

this does not apply to the Finches and Waxbills. These have

a nasty way of dying when newly imported, and there is a demand

for acclimatised specimens. This is being met by a careful system of

acclimatising. The Acclimatising House and a series of aviaries are



