131 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



THE OEANGE-BREASTED WAXBILL. 



THIS, the most cliarming of all the "Waxbills, is the greatest 

 favourite I have among the birds, native and foreign, I 

 have ever kept, and I would not willingly be without a num- 

 ber of them in my bird-room. The total length of this bird 

 is not quite three inches, of which the tail measures rather 

 more than one inch. 



The plumage of the male is dark greenish brown on the 

 back; the throat is yellow, and the breast and belly bright 

 oraage, which in older specimens becomes so dark as to be 

 almost black. The vent and rump are reddish orange, and the 

 beak the colour of red sealing-wax, while a narrow line of 

 vivid red runs from the angles of the mouth past the eyes 

 to the middle of the head. The legs and feet are yellowish 

 green. 



The female is rather greyer than her mate on the upper 

 parts of her body, and has no orange on her breast, which is 

 a pale greyish yellow, deepening to dim orange at the vent. 



These birds nest very freely in confinement, and live well 

 in an unheated room, though natives of Western Africa. The 

 eggs are very minute and quite white. The young are hatched 

 in ten or twelve days, and are fed on sponge-cake, ants' eggs, 

 soaked seeds,- green food, especially the unripe seeds of grass, 

 and aphides. 



Although such miniature birds, the Orange-breasted Wax- 

 bills will live for a long time in confinement, and that, as I 

 have said, in an unwarmed apartment; but they usually sleep 

 in their snug little nests during the cold weather, from which 

 they seem to receive no injury. 



