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An Australian Bird-Lover.



names for a few colours, massing all others under one name, so thatGigi

or Kula, which really only designate a colour, may be applied to many

different birds, parrots or finches of the same colour. However,

when I go to Fiji some other time I hope to settle that matter. Dr.

Bahr also holds that the yellow-headed ones and the blue-black

headed ones are only variations of the red-headed ones, a view from

which I differ. The variations are so great that it seems to me

hardly scientific to mass them with one class. Take the yellow¬

headed ones, for instance, of which I sent a skin to Mr. Seth-Smith.

The other specimen being alive and well, has moulted out from a

young bird with yellow bill and green plumage into a beautiful

yellow-headed specimen, and not only the head yellow but also the

vent feathers which, in the case of the blue-black headed ones,

retain the red. The other kind, blue-black headed ones, sometimes

almost sooty black, are more plentiful than the yellow-headed ones,

and it also appeal’s to me that hens of that kind predominate. In

older males the colour is invariably blue-black, showing some un¬

developed red quills which, mixed with the developed feathers, give

the head almost a purplish appearance.


Dr. Bahr says that some of his older red-headed birds became

orange-yellow, but I have not had that experience personally, though

I have had dozens of old and young birds. I have however noticed

in captivity that young birds with a blackish head moulted out red,

the older, the breeding birds, always kept their original colour. The

proportion is one yellow in about 100 red-headed, and one black-blue

in 10 red-headed ones. They all fly together in flocks of from 6 to

2-3 hundred. They breed all the year round it seems, the breeding

pair isolating themselves from the flock. The love or mating call

is a shrill note emitted by the male when chasing the female. I

know from personal observation in Fiji that these birds interbreed

for I have watched them build their nests in the mango trees.

Some of their offspring must retain the rarer colouring, otherwise

they would not be there, and for this reason I think this kind

should be a sub-section, the same as exists with the Gouldian

finches.


In Northern Queensland I have seen the black and red¬

headed Gouldians feed their young in the nest, the cock with red head



