the wild had no red above the cere -- although in some instances some males had a small dot of red near each nostril. Wow did I get shot down in flames, instantly one aviculturist contacted me to say that as a youngster he had lived in farming districts where the Port Lincolns were very common and all those that he had observed had a red band above the cere similar to the 28 although he considered the band was not as wide. Duly chastened I felt it important to pursue further research and over time I contacted other aviculturists on the subject. I have now been able to obtain and breed birds where the body colouring conforms to the Port Lincoln and yes there are those who do possess a narrow band of red see photo 1. I decided to submit this further
information for this article as well as details on the Port Lincoln birds from the arid zones.
THE BIG PICTURE: A totally Australian bird, Port Lincolns occur in fairly extensive areas of both South Australia and the Northern Territory, while the largest habitat area is in Western Australia where they occur over much of this large state. So what is it that I am discussing? You will see from the following information that if the various authorities have difficulty arriving at a standard for this species what hope has the poor old Joe blow -- or Josephine -- aviculturist. So down to tin tacks, it is interesting to note that the Western
Australian Museum in its Handbook of
[1]
Western Australian Birds lists this particular group under the title of Australian Ringneck Platycercus zonarius -- Platycercus is the classification for the rosella family -- while other authorities designate them under the Barnardius family name. Being an aviculturist whose interest is in the keeping breeding and studying birds on a day to day basis I don’t intend to buy into this issue, suffice to say it creates some confusion. As an Aussie
34 BIRD SCENE
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