Australian Grass Parakeets: a colour plate from 1952

In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 18th in the series.

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The artist of this plate was Neville William Cayley (1886–1950) well known in Australia for having produced the first full field guide to the birds of that country, What Bird is That ?, in 1931.

The accompanying note was written by Edward Jeffrey Boosey (1902-1969) who proceeded to tear the plate apart:

As is often the case with very prolific painters, however, his work as a bird artist tended to be of uneven quality, and I personally consider the accompanying colour plate one of his less successful efforts, as it cannot be called an accurate portrayal of either of the birds it depicts.

While I should hate to appear in the role of a carping critic, I do think the mistakes in the plate should be pointed out, as there has always appeared to exist a certain amount of confusion in people's minds when it comes to identifying the various species of Grass Parrakeets*….

Edward Jeffrey Boosey (a Boosey of the Boosey & Hawkes, music publishers) was a well known aviculturist. He and Alec Grantham Sagar-Musgrave-Brooksbank MC (1898-1967), known as Alec G. Brooksbank, had established Keston Foreign Bird Farm in Kent in 1927. Parakeets (stupidly now often called just ‘parrots’ by those who decide the common names of birds) and their breeding were a major interest.

Boosey described his experience of the Elegant Parakeet (Neophema elegans):

Elegants are among the most satisfactory of the Grass Parrakeets in confinement. I have kept and bred them regularly for the last sixteen years or so, and they were the only species of Grass Parrakeet we managed to keep going at Keston all through the war. They are also the only member of the Grass Parrakeet family to have become sufficiently well-established in a few people’s aviaries in this country for one to see young ones offered for sale at fairly regular intervals.

He had kept only one pair of Rock Parakeets (Neophila petrophila). Both became obese and produced only infertile eggs.

Judging by photographs online (I have seen neither species in the wild), Boosey was right. But then why did the Avicultural Magazine use the scarce resources available for printing colour plates  publish this plate?

Avicultural Magazine 58, 1952

*’Parrakeet’ was used by Avicultural Magazine but at some time must have changed to the now much more familiar ‘parakeet’.