The Marquess of Tavistock—Breeding Notes for 1933 387



The most interesting new arrival is a Intino hen Rosella, a very

beautiful bird indeed. The blue areas of the normal Rosella’s plumage

are snow-white or white faintly tinged with blue ; part of the green

and yellow areas are very pale lemon and the head, rump, and upper

breast are mainly orange-red, the feathers of the mantle being edged

with the same colour. The eyes are red and the feet pink. Naturally

I shall try and breed from her but I fear it will not be easy, partly

because she is tame and inclined to be cheeky ; partly because she

seems to have been kept in a cage a long time and is rather fat and

her constitution may not be of the Best and she may not be easy to

acclimatize to aviary life.


. Three cock Malabars are also a welcome new addition as my only

other cock is a lunatic who bites off his flight feathers at the beginning

of each breeding season and has damaged feet and beak. As a mate for

my best breeding hen I got the loan of a cock I bred myself some years

ago, but he did not do well and without being in any way ill did

not come into proper breeding condition and the hen got fed up with

him and did not lay.


The spinster Layard again nested but her eggs were infertile as she

had not time to get on friendly terms with the Plumhead I introduced.


The cock Slaty-head and hen Plumhead that lost their solitary

young one in the nest last year I provided this season with a natural

tree trunk as I find young Plumheads very intolerant of any substitute

for a completely natural nursery. Three eggs hatched : one young

one disappeared at an early stage, the others, a pair, have been reared.

They resemble young Plumheads, but their central tail feathers are

brighter blue with white tips and their heads have a dusky tinge.


A pair of White-capped Parrots (Pionus senilis) nested as soon as

they were turned out and the hen hardly left the nest for weeks. Their

one egg failed to hatch, but she appears to be sitting again. A young

bird was hatched from the second nest but was killed by the cock

when a week old.


A hen Stella’s Lorikeet has been a brief joy, for soon after her

arrival, when she was doing nicely, she found a hole in the wire and

vanished into the unknown !



