LOVE-BIRDS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 131, 6 June 1925, Page 16

LOVE-BIRDS

THE PROMISE OF THE PABRAKEET.. No poet has ever sung of the little Australian parakeet, which moved even the/ native black fellows to praise it in the name Budgerigar, derived from an aboriginal adjective meaning "pretty" or "good." Pretty as ■ the creature "is in. the green and yellow dress in which it is familiar as tho "fortune-tolling bird, there is the charm of. novelty in tho all-yellow and blue-and-white varieties it has since produced, to say nothing of the olive-green, slate-grey ivhito and even cinnamon forms which have iust been standardised by tho club which hag been formed this year by. the little lovebirds admirers. But more fascinating than these varied colours is the bird's happiness of disposition (says at writer hi the Graphic"). I know of no other that is so consistently busy and bright but the starling;. Like the starliu"- 'tho budgerigar will learn- to talk if. reared from the nest, arid" will.sometimes imitato the songs ; of' other birds without education. This is. not surprising in a parrot, but. where the. budgerigar surj passes the other member's of its" "ifled i family is nithe fact that it-breeds freely ! in an aviary alid will not infrequently I rear a. laimly even in a.-cage, and that I with much less attention thaii its rival, tho canary, requires. ! It is here that the bird might become ot really serious scientific and sociological value.'Man has-done some wonderful things in cultivating animals for intelligence, as the working collie and homing pigeon testify; but in tho budgerigar we have a creature that .can be kept and propagated where dogs and pigeons would he out of the question owing to their, size, and has 'the power of speech, which they have not. Breeding budgerigars from proved talkers—and ] both sexes will learn to speak—would be about the most fascinating hobby one could tako up, for presumably the I power of learning language is heredittary, like other mental peculiarities, while, after all, even with ourselves! it is doubtful whether any form of education has given better results than the old-fashioned linguistic one. It may be argued that it is a far cry from us lords of creation to pigmy parrots, but history tells us that man has been subjected to selection and hasreeponded to it.