Foreword

By David Seth-Smith, F.Z.S., President of the Avicultural Society and late "Zoo Man" of the B.B.C.

It was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation of my old friend, Edward Boosey, to write a Foreword to his book, for I knew that with his great experience of parrots, not to mention very many other kinds of foreign birds, he, of all people, would make a splendid job of it, and he has certainly done so. At the Keston Foreign Bird Farm in Kent he has kept and successfully bred many species that were thought to be very difficult if not impossible to breed in captivity, for he has carefully studied their every requirement and all his life has been a great bird-lover. A visit to these extensive aviaries will soon convince anybody that his birds also love him. He has perhaps been successful most of all in breeding the smaller of the parrot family, those which are popularly known as the parrakeets, but as this book shows us, the larger species have not been neglected at Keston, where some have reared their young with perfect success for the first time in Britain.

Most people have the idea that a parrot (using the popular term for the larger species) is a bird designed by Nature to occupy a cage as an ornament for the sitting-room, but happy as it may be, and often is, in such a situation and with only human companionship, it surely enjoys life better if it can live with a mate of its own kind in a large aviary where it can fly and perhaps rear a family.

Few of us have the space or means whereby to establish the very special aviaries required for the breeding of large parrots, but at Keston it has been done with great success in rearing such birds as the African Grey Parrot which, although well known since ancient times, had not, apparently, been successfully bred in Great Britain, though others have nearly succeeded. Also—again first breeding successes in this country—the seldom-imported and very beautiful Cuban Amazon, and the well-known Blue-fronted Amazon—the latter to the second generation—have been aviary-bred at Keston.

I knew of a case where a pair of Grey Parrots were given the run of an attic room where an old bookcase, packed with unwanted books, was the only furniture. The owners preferred the parrots to the books or the bookcase, and when it was found that they were eating a hole into the

 bookcase and chewing up the books they were allowed to carry on to their hearts' content. They excavated a deep cavity in which eggs were laid in a nest lined with chewed-up paper, and here a young one was hatched, but only partially reared. Its dead body, with quills just showing, was sent to me and remained, in spirit, in my room at the Zoo for several years.
The macaws are glorious birds, and I well remember the lovely sight of some of these brilliant creatures at full liberty amongst the trees at Lilford. Very few people could think of giving them such ideal conditions at the present day, but Mr. Boosey is doing the next best thing by providing his pair of Red-and-yellows with a huge aviary, strong enough to withstand their very powerful beaks. Let us hope that they will appreciate it and rear a family.

Although, throughout his book, Mr. Boosey has shown his own preference for keeping birds in aviaries, he has rightly pointed out that many members of the parrot family will live and flourish for years in cages—provided the latter are of adequate size and the birds themselves are frequently-let out and accorded really humane and considerate treatment by their owners.

Finally, I would like to mention the excellent bird photographs, which illustrate the book, and are such an asset to it. They were all taken specially for this work by the author's partner, Alec Brooksbank.

DAVID SETH-SMITH

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