114



Dr. E. Hopkinson,



supports a growth of bamboos interspersed in places with low

straggling thorns, hone-dry during the dry season when the thin

grass they support is burnt oft', and only wet, even during the rainy

season, while the rain is actually falling. It is in such situations,

and in these alone that one will find Vinaceous firefinches, searching

the ground for seeds or flitting among, the bare bushes, rarely more

than half a dozen or so together, sometimes by themselves, but

generally associated with common firefinches, cordon bleus and

grey-headed sparrows.


Although from habit I speak of these birds as ‘ firefinches,’

they are much more ‘waxbills ’ both in looks and demeanour, and

by recent authorities (e.g. Shelley in his Birds of Africa and Bowdler

Sharpe in the British Museum Hand-List) are placed with them in

the genus Estrilda (as E. vinacea ) near the Lavender finches, which

are the waxbills they most resemble in all their ways, and which

also were formerly included in the genus Lagonosticta.


The exact colour of this bird is rather difficult to define. I

do not know that ‘vinaceous ’ or ‘vinous ’ are particularly good or

sufficiently accurate epithets,—the thought of a wine of this bird’s

shade of “vinous” does not exactly suggest a vintage brand or

indeed any particularly pleasing tipple. Some time ago in a des¬

cription of this species, I used the word ‘ puce ’ as the nearest


colour-name I knew, and although I must own that in my own

mind I do not visualise exactly what ‘ puce ’ is, unless it is this bird’s

colour, I will repeat that description here.


Male: a puce-coloured bird with a black face; female: the

same colour but rather paler and with no black on the face; both

sexes with a few white spots on the side of the breast. In size they

are about the same as a lavender finch, but slimmer in build, more

the shape of a cordon bleu and the bills somewhat like that of the

aurora finch. The young male is like the female and gets his black

face at the first moult. I have had several birds, which at first I


thought were females, but which soon assumed the black mask and


thus declared their true sex. With these, as is the case with so

many of our African birds, in which one can distinguish the sexes

by their looks, one always seems to catch (for some reason, which it

is difficult to understand) a good many more males than females.



