on the Blue-Breasted IVaxbill.



121



was unable to perceive any difference between them. For

myself I can only say that, as the birds now portrayed are the

only two I have ever kept, I hesitate to make any positive

statement as regards the live bird. Moreover, in order not to

mix the two species, I have kept them as much apart as possible,

and mostly under different conditions, especially since the cold

weather set in, so a comparison is not of much value with

foreign birds of delicate natures and brightly-coloured plumes.

Any way now, in January, both of my Blue Breasts are consider¬

ably more blue than the Cordons, especially the female. The

Cordons, however, are loose in the birdroom by night and the

garden by day, and are subjected to influences adverse to

delicately tinted feathers, whereas the Blue Breasts are caged

for the winter in my dining-room. All the same, during the

summer I more than once remarked that the Blue - breasted

Waxbills had more blue about them than the Cordons.


Whilst writing on the subject of the plumage of these two

species, I cannot refrain from remarking that, in the British

Museum Catalogue of Birds, Vol. XIII. pp. 400-2, the females

of both species are described (excepting as regards the red ear-

patch) as similar to the male. I have kept and seen a great

number of Cordons, and, in my opinion, the males have always

been more blue in colour than the females. Even Dr. Stark

writes in the same disappointing strain, for, of the adult female

of Estrilda angolensis, he says, “ Resembles the male in plumage,

but is a little smaller.” (.Fauna of South Africa, Vol. I. p. 103).

My two birds, at an} 7 rate, plainly differ, as a glance at their

portrait will shew. During four days in June did Mr. Goodchild

work at the painting, with the birds before him in a small cage in

a good light, finishing off the painting on October 23, one of the

special points he laboured to portray being the differences

between the sexes. And not only, as may be clearly seen, is the

blue of the male of a deeper hue but it is more extended.


The following are my own notes, made at the time the two

birds were in the small cage, which I will transcribe in their

original curtness and roughness ;—“ Blue of male more intense

and more extended, especially over eyes and loral region, and



