In contrast to Andrew Stevens, I think the article by Pauline James on the new colour varieties of Green-cheeked Conures was colourful and informative, and showed some fine examples of these birds.
If I may be permitted a brief reply to Jim Hayward’s letter? I had no wish to infer any criticism of Pauline James’s article on the new Green-cheeked conure mutations, I merely wished to offer a different viewpoint on the birds.
A friend phoned me in a very distressed state. “Please warn other people!”, he said. His conure had been sitting on his shoulder for an hour. He got up to let the cat in. It was very hot and he turned on the ceiling fan, momentarily forgetting the conure was in the room. Seconds later it flew into the fan and was killed instantly.
My pair of Moustached parakeets laid three eggs in May and in June one chick hatched. But then we went through the recent drop in temperature, the hen left the nest and we thought the chick was dead. We could see on the nest-box camera monitor that the chick was no longer moving. We left it a while to see if the hen would try to feed the chick, which it did, but there was still no movement, so I went to retrieve it from the nest-box.