"The Australian Magazine" ("Weekend Australian", May 1-2, 1999) on page 25
carries a note about burung tités: "tiny grey doves" prized, bred and
traded for their songs in Thailand. (In case email doesn't show it, note
that "tité" has an acute accent over the "e".)
"The bird with the most enchanting song may be worth 2 million Thai baht
($85,000)," says author Paul Jarry. And the eggs of a female with a
particularly fine voice "can fetch more than $2600 each".
Would someone please put a note on birding-aus as to the species?
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my failing memory, I think that I once
heard that the Spotted Turtle-dove _Streptopelia chinensis_ now naturalised
in much of the coastal strip of eastern Australia (it's common in Brisbane)
is kept for its voice in some Asian countries. Could it be the burung
tité?
Syd Curtis at Hawthorne, Qld.
H Syd Curtis
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