Psittacus canus, Russ. Synonyms: Agapornis cana, Psittacus canus, Gml.;

GREY HEADED OR MADAGASCAR LOVE-BIRD.

Psittacus polyocar, Frst.; Polyopritta cana, Bp., etc.; Psittacula Madagascariensis, Fnsch.; Psittacula cana, Lss., etc.

German: Der graukopfige Zwergpapagei.

CLOSELY resembling the two previous species in size and general appearance, the Madagascar Love-bird is perhaps the least desirable of all three as an inmate of the aviary, in consequence of its intolerably quarrelsome disposition: some amateurs have, nevertheless, found it harmless, and Dr. Buss himself appears to have had individuals of this species that differed vastly in character, for on page 255 of his Hand-book, paragraph 419, he says: "The little Grey-head (Graukopfchen) is one of the most desirable inhabitants of the bird-room, and is to be prized above them all, as the most charming, most peaceable, and most readily nesting of birds."

On the very next page the doctor remarks: "Look out how you place a pair, or an old male, in the same cage with small birds, for it will murderously (morderisch) bite their legs:" and such has been our experience, not only in a cage, but in a large bird-room: whence we were compelled to remove them, after the loss of several of the inmates.

The general colour of these birds is green, but the head, neck, and upper breast of the male are pale lavender; the female is green, and can only be distinguished from a Passerine Parrakeet (Psittacus pas-serinus), or from the female of the Blue-winged Parrakeet (Psittacus gregarius), by the black spots on her tail.

Several amateurs, both in Germany and in this country, have succeeded in breeding these birds in their aviaries, but we have never obtained young ones from ours; possibly because, not caring about the birds, we did not take particular pains to induce them to breed.

The Madagascar Love-birds have a custom, peculiar to the subfamily to which they belong, of carrying small chips of wood, bits of grass and fibre, scraps of paper even, and other rubbish into the boxes or cocoa-nut husks they have elected to build in, and there make themselves a nest: Mr. Wiener relates that his birds carried these scraps to her nest-box on her back! a feat we have not yet seen attempted, but which, nevertheless, appears to be their usual habit.

The Love-birds in the several countries where they are found, feed on various kinds of seed, and in confinement require, especially the Bed-faced variety, that a portion at least of their food should be soaked for them: their diet in captivity should consist mainly of canary and millet, but hemp, oats, and maize (the small variety) should be occasionally added: green food they are very partial to of all kinds, and water is indispensable for their well-being: they do not bathe freely, but, like the Budgerigar, prefer to roll themselves in long wet grass.

All the varieties mentioned are sufficiently hardy to winter out of doors, even in England, and we have seen the Madagascar voluntarily roosting in the uncovered portion of the aviary, when the thermometer stood at considerably below zero Fahr., without any appreciable injury, and that when a good warm house was at his disposal, and most of his congeners had availed themselves of the shelter it afforded them.

The Rosy-faced, being the rarest, we have not tried out of doors, but Dr. Buss thinks it not less hardy than the rest of the Agapornis sub-family, of which the prettiest, gentlest, and most interesting member is the Blue-winged Love-bird (Psittacus gregarius).

Concerning A. cana, our esteemed correspondent Mrs. Cassirer writes from Paris as follows: - "I have had four nests from my Whiteheads; in each case the nesting material was carried as described by Dr. Buss and Mr. Wiener, namely, stuck between the feathers of the back and rump; so that the bird resembled a fretful porcupine. As ill-luck will have it, none of the eggs have been hatched. Last year the male bird was killed, and this year the male has been struck down with paralysis in the middle of the second brood, from the hips downwards: I presume from exhaustion from feeding the hen entirely for several weeks. With careful nursing I have brought him round so far as to enable him to sit on the perches again, but to my great regret the hind claws bend forward, so that he is lamed. I have given one third good muscatel wine with the drinking water daily for several weeks. The bird is very lively and sings, persisting in feeding his mate from the crop, even when she is shut up in a closely-wired cage. If placed in another room, he frets and mopes."

The following account of the members of the Parrot family whose nesting arrangements differ from that of the great majority of their congeners, has been compiled for us by our friend Mrs. Cassirer, and will be read with interest: -

"The Glaucous Macaw (Psittacus glaucus, Vll.), Ara bleuatre, Ara gris-bleu in French, German - Der Meerblaue Arara, nests in banks of streams, where he scrapes out a burrow with his powerful beak, as well as in holes of trees.

"The Hyacinthine Macaw (Psittacus hyacinthinus, Lthm.), French - Ara Maximilien, German - Der hyazinthblaue Arara, or Grosser blaue Arara, nests in hollows in banks, which the birds scrape out with their beaks; two eggs only are laid, and there are two broods in the season.

"The authorities for the above departures from the usual habits of the race are Azara and Dr. Russ.

"Miiller's Parrot (Psittacus Mulleri, Tmmk.), French - Perroquet de Muller, German - Mullens Edelpapagei, also Weissschnabel papagei: hollow places in rugged, inaccessible crags or cliffs are said to be used as nesting places; brood unknown.

"Authorities Dr. Meyer, Dr. Platen, Wallare and Von Rosenberg, quoted by Dr. Russ.

"Patagonian Conure (Psittacus Patagonus, Vll.), in contrast to all his relatives, and in general to almost all Parrots, this Parrot does not nest in trees, but in burrows in precipitous rocks. C. F. Poppig gives the following interesting description of one of their numerous colonies in Chili: - 'The uninitiated', he says, 'must be greatly astonished at these social settlements. After a toilsome march, towards noon one approaches a perpendicular cliff, and believes oneself in utter solitude; the deepest stillness reigns around, an indication of noontide in all the warmer regions of America, most of the animals being asleep at the time; a sort of grunting soon becomes audible; but in vain one endeavours to discover the animals which might probably produce it. Suddenly the warning cry of a Parrot is heard; it is caught up and repeated by many others, and before one can quite understand the matter, one is surrounded by flocks of those quarrelsome birds, which fly in narrow circles round the wanderer, and threaten to attack him in seeming anger. Out of the numerous holes in the rock, peer forth, comically enough, the round heads of the Parrots, and those which do not fly out, at least take part in the commotion by loud screams. Each hole indicates a nest, which has been burrowed out by the owners in the strata of clay which intersect the cliffs, and one may, not unfrequently, count some hundreds of them; yet such settlements are always selected with so much foresight, that both from above and beneath they are inaccessible to beasts of prey.'

"The above account is quoted at full length by Dr. Brehm and also by Dr. Russ.

"Ernest Gibson says that flocks of them pass through Buenos Ayres night and morning: 'They come, as I suppose, from the cliffs, or Baranken of Arroyos, on this side of the Sierra de Tantil, where they breed.' Dr. Karl Russ says they nest as described, in the Andes, Cordilleren, Tosca Cliffs, etc. According to Cunningham each nest contains from three to six eggs. Molina also speaks of them. Darwin, too, observed that this Conure nests in burrows in rocks, and in earth.

"The Ground Parrot (Pezoporus formoms), German name Der Erd-sittich, Sampf, or Grundpapagei. 'The white eggs are laid on the bare ground, both parents sitting by turns': authority Dr. Brehm, quoting from Gould. The same observations are greatly extended by Muller's, then superintendent of the Botanical Gardens at Melbourne, and though the latter apply to a second variety of the family, der Hohlensittich (Pezoporus occidentalis), it is very probable that they also apply to the Green Ground Parrot (Pezoporus formosus).

"The Great Ground Parrot (Strigops Habroptilus), German name Der Kakapo, oder der Eulenpapagei. Lyell says of this bird, 'The Great Ground Parrot lives in burrows under or among the roots of trees, and is also noticed under arches of overhanging rocks. As the roots of many varieties of trees in New Zealand raise themselves partly from the earth, hollows under them are very frequent; it appeared to us, however, as if those in which we met with the Kakapo had been widened, but we sought in vain for any traces of the earth that had been displaced.'

"Haast comes to the same conclusion: 'Although all the different dwellings that I examined were natural hollows, yet I found one which had been artificially constructed; on the north bank of the river Haast, near the mouth of the Clark, which is now two or three metres high (about nine and a half feet), were several round holes near the upper surface, through which the dog could not pass: he immediately began to smell on the upper surface, and commenced scratching away the earth on one spot, where he hit exactly upon the end of the burrow, and soon drew out the bird. This burrow was decidedly of artificial construction, so that it must be supposed that the bird possesses the power of digging.'

"Lyell gives the following account of the brood: - 'During the latter half of February, and the beginning of March, I found several young ones in the burrows, often only one, and never more than two together. In one case I found a rotten egg beside the young one. Generally, but not always, an old bird was found with the young one in the burrow; no exact nest is made, the Kakapo digging out only a shallow depression in the dry mass of decayed wood.' Authorities Haast, Lyell, George Grey, quoted by Dr. Brehm.

"Ring-necked Parrakeet (Psittacus torquatus). 'In order to rear his young family', says Blyth, 'he establishes himself not only in gardens, plantations, or shady trees, on the roads or waysides, but also in suitable cavities in large buildings, in the clefts and holes of walls.'

"'The breeding-season of the Bing-necked Parrot', as we learn from Jerdon, 'occurs in the months of January, February, and March; in the centre of Africa, the rainy season, which is followed by spring, is the time for reproduction. In India, as already mentioned, not only trees are selected as nesting places, but all kinds of other cavities, even those in the most widely differing buildings: in Africa, hollows in trees only are chosen.' Quoted by Drs. Brehm and Russ.

"The Quaker or Bog Parrot, Perrucke moine, ou souris; Monks, Quaker, yunge Witwe (Psittacus monachus), 'Builds large open nests on trees, which often exceed a metre (three feet) in diameter, closed in at the top, and lined with grasses; often several are found in one tree, and several hen birds lay their eggs in the same nest.' - Azara, confirmed in all particulars by Darwin and others; bred in captivity by Schmidt, and in the Berlin Aquarium: a picture of the nest was drawn by Mutzel for Dr. Brehm's Birds.

"Peach-faced Love-birds and Grey-headed Love-birds also make nests as described by Dr. Karl Buss, Mr. Wiener, myself (Mrs. Cassirer), and others."

An extremely interesting account of the nest-building propensities of the Quaker Parrot (Psittacus monachus), was furnished by Mr. Buxton to the Animal World. - "Five years ago I brought back from South America two small Green Paroquets, - these two were turned out about September, and early in October they began to build a nest on the top of a large vase, which stood in the open hall. Of course, according to their calculations the spring should have been well forward by October. They must have thought the winter unaccountably mild, and the spring and summer too disgustingly cold.

"The nest was formed of silver-birch twigs, twined and matted together, making one solid mass. The tiny birds looked very graceful flying into the hall with a long sprig of birch trailing behind them. Once, when the nest was almost three feet high, the whole of it was blown down, but they did not seem to mind, and when it was put up again they went on adding twig to twig as if nothing had happened. During the process of building they unmercifully attacked any birds that attempted to come near the precious nest. One old Cockatoo had to be kept indoors, so savagely did they attack him; and the Doves, who also inhabit the garden hall, had anything but a pleasant time of it. Unfortunately (in January), before the nest was finished, we had to come up to London, and one day, very soon after we had left, the birds disappeared: whether they lost themselves, or were stolen, we never discovered. The nest, as then left, was some five feet high, and about six feet in circumference at the top. The birds never showed any desire to lay eggs, but probably when the warm weather came they would have made some use of their stupendous structure.

"It is heart-breaking work endeavouring to acclimatise these Parrots and Cockies; no sooner do they become very tame and affectionate than, in most cases, they disappear. The climate does not appear to affect them; they seem just as cheerful in winter as in summer, and we have never been able to trace mortality to cold. They mostly die, I fear, a sudden and violent death. A high wind, the destructive gun, destroying Hawk, and possibly starvation when lost, make havoc in their ranks."

We could go on quoting, but must refer the reader to the work itself, from which we have borrowed the above highly interesting extracts, namely, The Animal World for 1878.

So much for nest-building Parrots: the Love-birds carry materials into the cavities they have selected for their habitation, lining the latter with the fibres, etc., they have laboriously conveyed into them on their backs: the Kakapo and some of the Macaws, and the Patagonian Conure, occasionally, if not always, excavate dwellings for themselves in banks and cliffs, but the Quaker or Monk Parrot is the only instance known of a member of the family building a nest with sticks, and must be looked upon as an exception to the general rule, that impels these birds to rear their young in burrows.