I Used To Go Out On My Pony To
Follow And Watch The Flock At Feed, And Wondered At Their Partiality
For The Bitter-Tasting Seeds Of The Wild Pumpkin.
This plant, which
was abundant with us, produced an egg-shaped fruit about half the size
of an ostrich's
Egg, with a hard shell-like rind, but the birds with
their sharp iron-hard beaks would quickly break up the dry shell and
feast on the pips, scattering the seed-shells about till the ground
was whitened with them. When I approached the feeding flock on my pony
the birds would rise up and, flying to and at me, hover in a compact
crowd just above my head, almost deafening me with their angry
screams.
The smaller bird, the paroquet, which was about the size of a turtle-
dove, had a uniform rich green colour above and ashy-grey beneath,
and, like most parrots, it nested in trees. It is one of the most
social birds I know; it lives all the year round in communities and
builds huge nests of sticks near together as in a rookery, each nest
having accommodation for two or three to half-a-dozen pairs. Each pair
has an entrance and nest cavity of its own in the big structure.
The only breeding-place in our neighbourhood was in a grove or remains
of an ancient ruined plantation at an estancia house, about nine miles
from us, owned by an Englishman named Ramsdale. Here there was a
colony of about a couple of hundred birds, and the dozen or more trees
they had built on were laden with their great nests, each one
containing as much material as would have filled a cart.
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