65



on the Breeding oj the Painted Finch.



so, for some sixty pairs of living birds had been, as it were, flit¬

ting far and wide about the country—north and south and east

and west—during some two months, and the ordinary man had

inspected their plumage and formed his own conclusions. In that

month, in a weekly Bird paper, there appeared an article on the

Painted Finch which included both of the above references, and

that without remark, contradictory though they be.


The statement that the plumage of the young (“ they vary

with age”) differs from that of the adult may be accepted with¬

out question ; but the assertion that “ there is no sexual difference

in plumage ” seems to be contradicted by the living specimens

that are with us, whose feathers sav that the writer of the account

of the species in the British Museum Catalogue which appeared

twenty years ago differentiated the sexes with commendable

accuracy.


Even if we suppose that the majority of the Painted Finches

now in this country were fledgelings when caught, still it must

be borne in mind that, for this class of bird, a rather long time

must have elapsed since that event took place. I was told that

the catcher had had them caged some two years by the time he

had finished his wandering expedition after various species and

they were all on board ship. This sounds a long time—let us

reduce it to six months, but even that will make the youngest well

over a year old. In several aviaries they nested this spring, then

moulted, and since have been nesting again and still are nesting.

If these are not evidences of maturity, where are we to draw the

line between the young bird and the adult ? Of these birds from

Australia I have three females, and, of these three, only one

(presumably a much older example) has any scarlet about the

face and fully comes up to the description of the adult female in

the B.M. Catalogue, whereas the other two have no scarlet on the

lores and only a speck on the breast. All three have laid eggs

and at least one has had young, so may, I should suppose, be

classed as adults; at any rate they must be accepted as being as

old as the males. But the males have their catalogued allowance

of scarlet, much more than the old female can boast of, and the

sexual difference in plumage is plain enough for any one to

see. Has any body experienced difficulty in sexing his Painted



