Aviculture, Art and a Ghost Pig—An Entertaining Diversion

In my last post I listed a number of prominent British bird keepers of the early decades of the 20th Century. I was trying to work out where Falcon Close, the house of Captain Reginald Waud was situated when a Google search threw up a link to a Reginald Waud and the sighting of a ghost pig in Hampshire. Intrigued, I dug a little further. Were these Wauds one and the same person?

I now know that the Reginald Wauds were one and the same—Louis Reginald Waud (1873-1960), the scion of a very wealthy worsted spinner of Bradford in Yorkshire. In the 1930s Waud was member of the Council of the Avicultural Society*, a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a member of the British Ornithologists’ Union. Sometime he moved from Falcon Close at Woolton Hill, near Newbury to Bradley Court also near Newbury but at Chievely over the border in Berkshire. He was a dairy farmer and local newspapers documented his success at local agricultural shows.

I was hampered by Waud sometimes using his forenames in reverse order and of his associate being known, possibly as an initial error, by two names. Reversal of forenames was not uncommon; indeed my father in law always, as far as he knew, had his reversed which gave him difficulties in later life with legal papers.

Like many bird keepers of the time, he allowed nesting birds to leave their aviary and forage in the wild for food to feed their young. He had a Hawk-headed Parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus) which flew in the grounds all day and returned to its cage for the night. It attacked and saw off an owl.

During the First World War, Reginald Waud volunteered for the Artists Rifles at the age of 41. He was appointed to the 10th Service Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment, a reserve force; he was promoted to Captain in early 1915. Records show that he was transferred to the 8th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment in August 1915. I have been unable to find out in what capacity he served since there were reserve as well as an active unit in the 8/Manchesters, the latter serving in Gallipoli. The next record I could find is in the London Gazette in 1918. He is described as having served in the South Staffordshire Regiment and having the rank of Honorary Captain. Does this mean he was serving by then serving as in some sort of civilian role within the army? He was though in that same announcement appointed as Captain in the army proper for duty under the Director of Railways from 14 January with seniority from 23 November 1914, the date shown at his enlistment with the Artists Rifles. Having finished reading Haig’s war diaries last year I now realise what a successful railway system had been set up behind the front line to bring materiel from the Channel ports.

Shortly after the armistice Waud married Ann Bower (1881-1972) in Westminster. He is shown on the marriage certificate as a Captain in the South Staffordshires. Waud contributed to the parish war memorial at Welford (Hoe Benham falls within that parish).

Waud was referred as Captain Waud after the War. I have often wondered why so many soldiers did so, since it was—and still is—considered infra-dig to carry a rank below that of Major into civilian life. I have read that they did so in order to indicate that they had served their country at a relatively advanced age and were considered sufficiently able to reach that rank. Waud had no need to establish his middle-class credentials as some very unrespectable Captains did.

Before the War, Waud was an artist. A graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, he attended from February 1896 until January 1901.

I must now jump to Reginald Waud’s friend, Osmond (sometimes Oswald, sometimes Osmund—even in the same document) Pittman (1874-1958). Pittman was also an artist at the Royal Academy Schools from July 1897 until July 1902 (he exhibited there in 1901, 1902 and 1904). He married Waud’s cousin, Caroline Mabel Waud, in 1908.

It was shortly before Pittman’s marriage when Waud and Pittman were living at Hoe Benham, a hamlet and, again, near Newbury, that Pittman saw ‘the ghost pig’. The story has been repeated numerous times in books on ghosts and the paranormal, sometimes with the details wrong. However, here is the original version:

                                                                                         Hoe Benham, Newbury
On November 2nd, 1907, I was painting in the Studio with my friend Reginald Waud; the model was our servant dressed as a widow, and we were waiting for Miss Miles to join us. At 10 o’clock I knew the milkman had come by the dogs barking in the cottage at the top of the garden. So I said, “I will take the milk in,” and went up to the cottage. After putting the jug in the pantry and shutting the cottage door, I looked up the road and saw Miss Miles coming down with her easel and paint-box. Following quite close behind her was a large white pig, with a long snout. I went down to the Studio and said to Waud, “What do you think Miss Miles is bringing down with her this morning, instead of her Chow? A large pig!” We roared with laughter, and he said, “Call out and tell her not to bring her friend in, and to be sure to shut the gate, as we take a great pride in our garden.” The moment Miss Miles appeared I opened the window and shouted out, “What have you done with your companion?” She was very surprised and said, “ My companion, what do you mean?” Then I told her what I had seen following her. She immediately said, “If a pig were trotting behind me, I must have heard it. Besides, there is a very easy way of finding out, for I passed the milkman in the lane and he must have seen it, but I shall go and look for myself.” When she came back she said: “There is no trace of a pig anywhere.” We made enquiries all over the village; no one had seen a stray pig. There is only one white one in the place, and this one, its owner assured us, could not possibly have got loose without his knowing it. At the present time there is a notice out forbidding owners to allow pigs to stray, under penalty of a fine, as there have been cases of swine fever. We enquired of the milkman next morning. He remembered passing Miss Miles, as he usually met her about the same time. He most emphatically said there was no pig to be seen anywhere on the road.

Well as ghost stories go you will probably admit to not being terribly impressed by this one. Pigs are surprisingly agile and could have through a hedge or over a bank in no time. Did anybody look for trotter prints? And would anybody confess to owning an escaped pig and risk a fine under the swine fever regulations? But as I said the account has been repeated time and time again. But who, you may ask, reported the event and why? It was none other than Clarissa Miles herself, in a paper published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. The above account was signed by Pittman, Waud, Miles and the maid, Louisa Thorne. In fact it was only part of the story of the experiments and happenings at Hoe Benham.

Clarissa Frances Miles, born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire to a very wealthy family, was well known in psychic research circles: she was a dowser, an active member of the Society for Psychical Research (along with a number of Fellows of the Royal Society) and member of the Alchemical Society, Her experiments on ‘thought transference’ over long distances with her friend, Hermione Ramsden were, and still are, discussed in relation to evidence of  telepathy. Indeed some of these experiments were described in the same paper as the ‘ghost’ pig and involved Reginald Waud’s studio. Thoughts argued to have been transferred from Miss Ramsden from Miss Miles and then depicted by Miss Ramsden were of Waud’s new studio at the bottom of his garden. But that was not all.

Miss Miles continued:

On February 4th, 1908, I returned to Laburnum Villa to finish one or two paintings I began last autumn. I also wished to get further evidence of the strange animal forms that are supposed to haunt this lane, as I was told last November, after the episode of the phantom pig, that so many of the villagers had been witnesses of these remarkable apparitions under different forms, such as a cat, a dog, or a rabbit, or other animals. Mr. Pittman and Mr. Waud had never seen anything weird or out of the ordinary till I came down last autumn and began thought-transference with Miss Ramsden; they had only heard quite casually very vague accounts of something strange that had been seen years ago, to which they had paid but little attention. The villagers are very reticient [sic] and will not talk much for fear of being laughed at, but the history of the phantom pig overcame all difficulties on that score as regards my enquiries. 

The villagers all tell the same story to account for these apparitions. They put them all down to “Tommy King.” He was a farmer, who lived over a hundred years ago. He hung himself in an outhouse, and his spirit is supposed to haunt the spot, appearing in these strange shapes and making uncanny noises. The farm buildings and outhouses were all demolished on the occasion of the sale of the property by Mr. Dreweatt to Sir Richard Sutton in 1892; only a cottage remains, which is still called King’s cottage, and a disused well close to the lane, which is called Tommy King’s chalk well. In former years they used to dig out chalk from the side of the hill. I have looked at the Register of the Parish Church and there are entries of the deaths of two Tommy Kings, one in 1741, the other in 1753, so it must be one of these two…

Then Clarissa Miles produced signed statements of sightings. One, in January 1905, of a huge black dog that changed shape into a donkey standing on its hind legs with huge glowing eyes was signed by William Thorne. In 1897, William Thorne and John Barrett saw a ‘curious looking animal, snowy white’ which seemed too large for a cat, ‘more the size of a terrier with a fluffy coat’. Albert Thorne had seen an animal five feet long, the shape of a calf, with large glowing eyes.

There were also stories of ‘summat like a sheep’ that vanished when approached with a stick. After describing other strange sightings by villagers Clarissa Miles described what had happened in February 1908 when she was again staying at Laburnum Villa, Wickham Heath.

On Sunday, February 16th, 1908, I arranged to join Mr. Waud and go to the Church with him at Hoe Benham to 3 o’clock service. All the morning I felt in a weird, trance-like state, the condition I get into when I have visions of coming events, changes likely to affect my future. I described these sensations both to Mr. Pittman and to Mr. Waud. After Church I felt compelled to walk towards Tommy King’s chalk well, as I wished to see the road along which the team of horses came, which were so terrified at the white thing bobbing up and down over their heads [one of the stories from two locals]. We thought we would go and have tea with Mr. and Mrs. Le Mesurier, who live at the end of the lane just opposite Halfway Inn. To reach them from Hoe Benham we always take a short cut across the fields… After tea, Mr. Waud and I walked back. On passing Tommy King’s well an overpowering sense of suffocation seized me, I felt the presence of some awful being. This evil spirit seemed to follow me up Pound Hill. I walked back. On passing Tommy King’s well an overpowering sense of suffocation seized me, I felt the presence of some awful being. This evil spirit seemed to follow me up Pound Hill. I felt it longing to do me some bodily injury, there was such deadly malice and hate in the air. I described all this to Mr. Waud. We constantly looked around but could see nothing. These sensations continued all the way back, but grew worse as we walked up Benham Hill. After the cottage was passed a shiver went down my back and spine, the same kind of shock I experience when dowsing and walking over water. Suddenly quite close to us on the road the stillness of the evening was broken by an unearthly scream which seemed to end in a moan. As the sound seemed so very close to us, we both looked round to see if anything was near which would have produced it, but nothing whatever was visible. We both were speechless for a minute,— the effect was so awful. We hardly spoke till we reached Laburnum Villa, the time being about six o’clock. It was only the next day, in comparing notes, that we found this dreadful wailing cry was heard on the exact spot where the phantom pig was seen by Mr. Pittman following me on November 2nd, 1907. 

Two evenings after, on February 18th, I walked to Tommy King’s chalk well with Mr Pittman to try if any more strange phenomena could be seen. It was a brilliant moonlight night. No evil beings were there to disturb the stillness of this evening, all was calm and peaceful. I tried automatic writing, and two sentences were written twice over; they came with such lightning speed, no human hand could have written that pace alone. The words were, “I am in hell, pray for me, I am in hell, pray for me”; nothing more. On walking back we looked around and across the lane a white band of light appeared;—the same sparkling effect I have sometimes seen at sea, from the deck of a yacht on a dark night, shimmering on the ocean. It was of a quite different quality from the moonlight. This luminous effect undulated up and down, backwards and forwards, and seemed to come towards us, till it appeared to be only five yards away; it was about a foot from the ground; it then receded and disappeared. We both saw it; most strange and mysterious it appeared in the brilliant moonlight. Another evening a little later I walked down with Mr. Pittman but nothing of special interest occurred. But the pencil wrote automatically, “I am happier.” 

     On Benham Hill where so many strange apparitions have been seen, one evening when it was half daylight, half dark, I distinctly saw a white shadowy form which appeared like drapery standing against the gate. No one else saw this. 

     On Thursday, February 27th, my last evening at Hoe Benham, I dined at the cottage, and Mr. Pittman and Mr. Waud walked back with me. We were laughing and talking. Suddenly our conversation was interrupted by this unearthly moaning cry, which came wailing across the stillness of the evening. This doleful sound seemed to come over our heads from the roof of the Chapel which is exactly opposite Laburnum Villa. We all heard it. It was a repetition of the groan Mr. Waud and I heard the other evening preceded by that awful scream.
                                                                                          (Signed) Clarissa Miles.
                                                                                                       Reginald Waud.
                                                                                                     Osmund Pittman.
Mr. Waud adds:
On Monday, February 24th, whilst Pittman and I were taking tea in the cottage, two distinct taps were heard on the door just behind us. Both dogs started barking. I got up, thinking some one had called. I went to both doors and not a sign of any one or anything was to be seen. It was about 6.15.
                                                                                                       Reginald Waud.

Clarissa Miles even died in strange circumstances. She lived in a flat at 59 Egerton Gardens, South Kensington, London (and was doing so at the time of her visits to Hoe Benham in 1907-08). The lease was due to end on 14 August 1930 but she did not renew it, having visions that something was going to happen. She died on 13 August, one day before the lease was up; she was 70†.

Osmund/Oswald Pittman continued working as an artist and illustrator. His and Reginald Waud’s pictures appear at auction and examples can be found online.

A Louis Reginald Waud painting. Was
the model Louisa Thorne?

By Osmond Pittman

Another by Osmond Pittman

And what of the happenings at Hoe Benham in 1907 and 1908? Did they disappear when Clarissa Miles no longer visited? Did later residents see strange animals or strange lights?

While I can think of lots of alternative explanations (alcoholic beverages sold at the inn at the end of the lane to Hoe Benham could be involved) including an albino badger, and the ‘fantasy prone personality’ of Miss Miles, I will leave the reader with the story as it emerged at the height of the spiritualism and paranormal boom in the early years of the 20th Century.

But if anybody fancies a walk one night along the dark lane towards Hoe Benham, here is a satellite view of the area Miss Miles described from Google Earth for to to find your way:

But I may not join you.

This modern Google Earth view shows Hoe Benham. I have added the site of King's Barn from an 1890s Ordnance Survey.

The circle shows my estimate of the location of Reginald Waud's House. There is a house there with a building in the garden that could have been his studio and a lane (obscured by the trees) runs alongside to the garden to join the wider lane that passes the cottages and Benham Farm where the Thorne family worked, mainly as agricultural labourers. That wider lane leads to Wickham Heath where Clarissa Miles was staying.

My suggested location also accords with there being children from the cottages playing further along the lane and who, when questioned, said they had not seen a pig.

The distance from the circle to Laburnum Villa is approximately half a mile.

At the bottom of the map can be seen the A4, the major route between London and Bristol at the time.

*He joined the Society in May 1913. Confusingly, for several years he was listed as P. or S. Reginald Waud; the error was eventually corrected.

†I have been unable to find an entry in the registers for her birth. She was christened on 7 May 1860, probably suggesting her birth was earlier in that year.

Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country house once had storks perched on its chimneys

In this Age of Wilful Ignorance, the only general agreement seems to be that the intellectual ability of our elected politicians is at an all-time low. But when the duplicitous and incompetent meet at the Prime Minister of the day’s official country house to make cunning plans, do they realise it was once the home of a major collection of birds kept by a previous inhabitant and that free-flying storks rested on its chimneys?

Keeping birds spanned all strata of Victorian and Edwardian society. The super-rich had large aviaries containing exotic birds or lakes housing exotic waterfowl, often of species that even today are often difficult to see in the wild, let alone catch and bring back alive during a long sea passage. The poor, on the other hand, had their singing canary or linnet in a cage.

Chequers or Checkers Court was handed to the nation in 1921. In the late 19th until the early 20th Century, the house was owned by the Astley family, descended from the Plantagenet kings of England.

The Reverend Hubert Delaval Astley (1860-1925) had a large collection of birds in later life at his house at Brinsop Court in Herefordshire. However, he makes it clear that he began in Chequers, then occupied by his brother. Indeed he had a photograph of ‘my beautiful old home’ as the frontispiece to his book, My Birds in Freedom & Captivity (Dent, London, 1900), an exemplar of sickly Victorian literature.

Chequers - from Astley's book. Subseqent alterations to the house can be
seen by comparing this to a modern photograph

Astley, who served as President of the Avicultural Society which then served the posher end of bird keeping, wrote:

I could not resist introducing as a frontispiece my beautiful old home in Buckinghamshire, of which my mother was heiress (now belonging to my brother, Mr Frankland-Russell Astley, a house restored in the reign of Queen Elizabeth—who there for a time incarcerated Lady Mary, the sister of Lady Jane Grey—and where once Lady Russell, one of the daughters of Oliver Cromwell, presided as mistress. On its chimneys many a stork has, of late years, rested; and in its grounds many another of my birds has walked and flown.

Hubert Astley with his Trumpeters at Brinsop Court

Casey Albert Wood (from here)

Astley’s birds featured in a paper published in 1926 written by a Canadian ophthalmologist who had visited the well-known aviculturists in England. He was there to see what could be learned from their methods of housing and caring for exotic birds that could be applied by bird keepers in North America. That meant he toured a number stately and upper middle-class homes. Casey Albert Wood (1856-1942) had served with the U.S. Army in the First World War and was well known for his work on the comparative anatomy of the avian eye and as a clinician. He described the accommodation for birds at Brinsop Court as well as those belonging to: a Captain Waud of Falcon Close, Woolton Hill in Hampshire; the Duchess of Wellington at Ewhurst Park, Hampshire; Mr Shore-Baily at Westbury, Wiltshire; the Marquess of Tavistock at Warblington, Hampshire; Alfred Ezra at Foxwarren Park, Surrey; Herbert Whitley of Paignton, Devon (later Paignton Zoo); Miss Ethel Chawner at Forest Bank, Hampshire; the late Mrs Dalton-Burgess (Clifton, Bristol) who is described as having the ‘largest, private indoor aviary in England’.

Wood illustrated his article with photographs of Hubert Astley and of Brinsop Court. These photographs were also used for a paper in a French magazine on Astley’s collection by Jean Delacour.

Wood CA. 1926. Lessons in aviculture from English aviaries. Condor 28, 3-30.

The Yellow-crested or Lesser Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. Part 6. Captive Breeding

This is the 6th and final  of a series of articles on this once common but now critically-endangered species from the islands of Indonesia and of Timor Leste.

History

The quaint behaviour of the Avicultural Society, an organisation founded in U.K. in 1894, allows us to find very easily when a species was first bred in U.K. The Society gave a medal for the first breeding of a species and often a subspecies. In these more enlightened times a medal might be deserved for breeding an endangered species for a number of generations while keeping inbreeding to a minimum but I suppose the idea of a medal appealed to the many super-rich members in the aristocracy as well as the nouveau-rich industrialists and retailers who often had enormous collections of birds in their stately homes and who competed with one another to obtain the rarest birds from all over the world.

The first record of the Yellow-crested Cockatoo breeding in captivity in U.K. was reported in Avicultural Magazine in 1924. The breeder was M.T. Allen and the medal was given for breeding the subspecies C. sulphurea sulphurea. I have not seen the article.

By chance I do have copies of the Avicultural Magazine reporting the breeding in 1955 and 1956 of two other subspecies, namely, the Citron-crested (C. s. citrinocristata) and what was named as the Timor Cockatoo, C. s. parvula. The breeder in both cases was S.B. Kendall.

Dr Stanley Brian Kendall PhD MRCVS ARCS FIBiol (1915-1999) was a veterinary parasitologist then working at the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey. Like many veterinary graduates of his day he worked in Africa as a Colonial Veterinary Officer for a time, in this case Tanganyika from 1943 to 1947. He lived in Chertsey, Surrey and joined the Avicultural Society in 1953.

By the 1950s the membership of the Avicultural Society was more mixed. There were still members of the aristocracy but the annual list shows zoo directors and curators, museum people, scientists and a great many private bird keepers and breeders. The tendency was for the latter not to be bird ‘fanciers’ who exhibit artificially selected birds competitively nor pet bird keepers. The Society was—and still is—a cut above those pursuits.

Kendall’s first article begins:

     The Citron-crested Cockatoo has always been a rare bird in captivity, presumably as a result of its limited distribution (Sumba Island), but during the temporary lifting of the ban [because of a risk of psittacosis to the public] on the importation of parrots in 1952-1953 a number reached this country. There are at present several odd males in different hands, but the hens are unfortunately very few.

He then went on to describe the simple outdoor aviary, the introduction of potential nest boxes, how the birds were fed and then the nesting and appearance of two young.

His second article is entitled, Breeding the Timor Cockatoo. And this is where I have trouble in knowing which of the currently recognised subspecies he actually bred. The candidates are, of course, parvula from Timor and occidentalis from the islands west of Timor, from Alor to Lombok.
The fact that they were clearly known in the early 1950s as Timor Cockatoos might suggest they were parvula. But this is what Kendall had to say:

     Timor Cockatoos are similar to the better-known Lesser Sulphur Cockatoo [sic]. from which they can be distinguished by the considerably less well developed areas of sulphur-yellow on the back of the head and cheek, and by the virtual absence of yellow on the chest and belly. In addition, they are markedly smaller; hens are often really tiny and must be the smallest cockatoo that exists.

I take this paragraph to indicate that C.s. sulphurea was sometimes imported from Sulawesi but again I have difficulty in deciding whether his birds were occidentalis or parvula, although the size might suggest parvula. But whether his birds really were parvula in the present definition I still doubt, especially since in another paragraph he wrote:

     As the popular name suggests, the main home of parvula is in Timor Island. Skins in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, are labelled East Timor, South Flores, Pantar and Lombok…

In other words, the Museum was not recognising Hartert’s distinction between parvula and occidentalis.

I doubt we shall ever know the origin of Kendall’s birds that were imported into Britain in May 1952 unless, of course, somebody out there has records or photographs.

Kendall’s pair of cockatoos, treated in much the same way as his Citron-crested, produced two young.

As an example of coincidence I found while writing this article, Kendall’s medal from the Avicultural Society for breeding C. s. parvula for sale on eBay.

One  of S.B. Kendall's Avicultural Society Medals
for sale on eBay in Fenruary 2017

It was established that C. sulphurea could be bred—and would breed pretty easily. In part 2 of this series I mentioned Lindholm’s survey of parrots bred in American zoos between 1959 and 1994; 20 Yellow-crested Cockatoos were bred in 5 zoos; 50 Citron-crested in 11 zoos.

However, with all cockatoos, a major problem emerged: incompatibility of potential breeding pairs. In seemingly compatible pairs the male would kill the female without warning. Amongst a number of recommendations were that a number of cockatoos of the same species should be brought up together so that pairs could form naturally. However, other problems seemed to be associated with hand-rearing. Some cockatoos were taken from the nest and hand-reared. They, along with many other animals treated in such a manner, became totally confused as to their identity, living in some warped social structure between human and cockatoo. That problem has been exacerbated by the virtually complete hand-rearing of cockatoos from hatching in order to produce ‘tame’ (for a while) birds for the pet trade. These birds, imprinted on their human rearer and weaned onto adult food too soon, are simply but sadly crazy.

The Baby Cockatoo Industry

The industry—and it is an industry particularly in the U.S.A.—of production line, hand-reared birds for people besotted by baby cockatoos is a dead end as far as proper aviculture or captive breeding for conservation is concerned, and a life of confused misery for the individual cockatoo. Rosemary Low who is a world expert on parrots in captivity writes on her website:

     Can there be anyone who reads parrot magazines who is not aware of the fact that white cockatoos are too demanding to make suitable pets? That is putting it mildly.  Many, perhaps even the majority, of these highly intelligent and (when young) irresistibly appealing birds, end up as unwanted or abused. They develop serious psychological problems that manifest themselves in problem behaviours such as biting, screaming and feather plucking…
     …I already asked the question is there really anyone in the parrot world who does not know what is in store for most hand-reared white cockatoos?  Even ten or 20 years ago real parrot lovers were misguidedly hand-rearing these birds. Now that the problem is so well known, and parrot rescue facilities with sad, plucked and demented socially-deprived cockatoos are even seen on TV programmes, only the commercial breeder who cares more for money than for birds, continues to hand-rear them…
     The misery will end only decades after white cockatoo breeders shut up the nest-boxes forever. Even if that happened tomorrow, the supply of sad and abused birds to refuges would not dry up for another 50 years. Some people are dedicating their lives to repairing the damage that breeders have done. Cockatoo breeders: please take your heads out of the sand where they have been buried for at least a decade. The blame lies firmly on your doorstep. If you really love cockatoos you will stop breeding them now. And parrot owners, if you love them you will stop buying them from breeders. Only if there is no demand will the market dry up and the misery end.

Conservation Breeding

There is one saving grace for those who began an interest by having a pet cockatoo or other parrot. They have realised that many species have become endangered. Together with private aviculturists and those in zoos who seek to perfect proper captive breeding (i.e. without hand rearing) they provide a useful lobby to campaign and to raise money for conservation in the wild as well as ex situ.

Collar & Butchart of Birdlife International, in an excellent paper in International Zoo Yearbook in 2014 on captive breeding of birds for conservation include C. sulphurea in the ‘precautionary’ category. 

European Zoos have an EEP (European Endangered Species Programme) for the Citron-crested subspecies (C. s citrinocristata) but that does not include any of the equaly endangered Yellow-crested subspecies.

The European Zoos have produced guidelines for the husbandry of ‘white’ cockatoos in the various breeding programmes. However, the guidelines seem to me to place too much emphasis on artificial incubation of the eggs and hand rearing. Successful captive breeding (‘the discipline and practice of nurturing animals successfully through the reproductive cycle in captivity’ as defined by Collar & Butchart) is not achieved if eggs have to be incubated and/or chicks have to be fed by human hands. Parental care is part of the reproductive cycle. If the parents do not perform that task then captive breeding has failed even though chicks have been produced; the fault lies with the keeper who has not provided the correct conditions and needs to do more research and perhaps needs to spend a lot more money to get them right. 

In conclusion, given the relative ease of breeding C. sulphurea, as exemplified by Kendall in the 1950s, I have no doubt that given sufficient resources a successful captive breeding/reintroduction programme could be successful—but only as a last resort and only if the remaining habitat could support a population.

                                                 ————————

Finally, it is worth reading Dr Siti Nuramaliati Prijono’s* case study on C. sulphurea in Indonesia written in 2008 showing the state of the various populations up to 2005 and the conservation measures that were needed. It would be informative to have a follow-up study to see what has happened on the ground in the last ten years.

*Dr. Siti Nuramaliati Prijono has been Principal Secretary of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences since 2014. We were once near neighbours when she was working at the Scottish Agricultural College at Auchincruive.

Collar NJ, Butchart SHM. 2014. Conservation breeding and avian diversity: chances and challenges. International Zoo Yearbook 48, 7-28.

Kendall SB. 1955. Breeding the Citron-crested Cockatoo. Avicultural Magazine 61, 226-229.

Kendall SB. 1956. Breeding the Timor Cockatoo. Avicultural Magazine 62, 6-9.

Lindholm JH. 1999. An historical review of parrots bred in zoos in the USA. Avicultural Magazine 105, 145.

O’Brien J. 2007. EEP Husbandry Guidelines for Cacatua spp. 2nd edition.

Prijono, S. N. (2008). Case Study: Cacatua sulphurea. NDF Workshop. https://cites.org/sites/default/files/ndf_material/WG6-CS4.pdf