100 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
coloured birds that you know so well—the male and 
female are alike, and if you were to see a kingfisher 
—the star-bird that I told you about in the first 
chapter—gleaming and glancing up a river, you would 
not know whether it was the one or the other. The 
feathers of the female scarlet flamingo are almost—if 
not quite—as scarlet as those of the male; the cock 
robin’s breast is not more red than the breast of the 
hen robin, at least you would find it difficult to tell 
the difference ; male and female pigeons—and some of 
them are very splendid—are as bright as each other, 
and so it is with a very great number of other birds. 
Now does not this seem funny, that some male 
birds should be so much handsomer than their wives, 
whilst some /ez birds should be just as handsome as 
their husbands? Is there any way of explaining this, 
or, rather, do we know how to explain it? for there 
is a way of explaining everything—a right way, I 
mean, of course. The difficult thing is to find it 
out. Well, there are some clever people who have 
been thinking about this funny thing, and they try to 
explain it in this way. 
Of course, when the male Birds of Paradise (and 
it is the same with other birds) show off their fine 
plumage to the hen birds, it is because they want to 
marry them, which is just the same as with people; 
for, you know, when a gentleman wishes to marry a 
