An Old Australian Bird-lover—The Colour Question 247


the feathers, no matter whether they are perfect or malformed. I am

confirmed in this view by the experiment I made with some scarlet

Robins. Removing a small patch of the red breast feathers I found

that the new growth made an ugly area of dirty pink amid the scarlet.

Assuming that the blood had stored up sufficient red pigment to last

from one moult to the next, one would think it would supply the new

feathers with the stored red pigment in the same way as those left

undisturbed. Acting upon what Dr. Butler says, I tried to wash out

the red of feathers belonging to different species, and as they were

feathers of freshly caught birds I should say the experiment should

have succeeded if anything really was to be washed out; but I can

state definitely that no particle of colour came away. That birds after

a bath appear to have a modified colour sometimes different from the

original—like Green Parrots, which generally show a bronze tint after

a bath—shows that there can be no colour feeding from the blood,

or there would be no change of colour before or after a bath. The

particles of what appears colouring matter in the water may quite

likely be the powdery substance found on many birds’ feathers. Any¬

one who handles, for instance, Kagus knows that the hand becomes

quite grey with the powdery stuff, the colour of the plumage of

the bird.


These colour changes have always interested me, and for many

years I have carried on experiments with Australian insectivorous

birds and foreign seed-eaters. One fact I have settled to my entire

satisfaction, and that is that both insectivorous and seed-eating birds

require a certain amount of live food, which itself has lived upon live

plants. They absolutely require these a few months before the moult

sets in. I have tried this on Orange Bishops in conjunction with

feeding on unripe seed, such as millet or grass-seed still in a milky

state. / almost got back the original scarlet colour! Red-breasted

Australian Robins fed upon mealworms exclusively produced a dirty

pink after the first moult, others which received in addition to the

ordinary soft bill food minced raw beef became almost white, which

shows that the mealworms fed on dry vegetable matter like bran will

not produce the natural scarlet in the feathers. During my experiments

with the Sanguineous Honey-eater (Blood-bird) 1 allowed some of these



