-«, Fauna : Birds 



This is a very noisy bird, which usually goes in troops of 

 four or five companions. It is a species which does not seem 

 to show any colour variation throughout its extensive range, 

 examples collected by us in Liberia being precisely similar in 

 colour to others which were collected in Uganda. In reviewing 

 the specimens of this bird in notes on the Liberian fauna, put 

 together for the Zoological Society, I made two mistakes : one 

 was to say that the examples collected by Mr. Harold Reynolds 

 in Liberia differed from the Uganda forms by the blue in the 

 male inclining more to ultramarine, and also that the male of 

 this species was considerably larger than the female, and brighter 

 in coloration. But in examining a larger series of specimens 

 from Liberia and Uganda, I find that although in both countries 

 there are individuals that attain to a lighter and more greenish 

 blue, there are other forms in which the colour inclines more 

 to ultramarine ; while the smaller, duller-coloured types which 

 I took to be representative of the females were merely immature 

 females, and resembled closely immature males of the same 

 age. In this great blue plantain-eater, therefore, the same 

 thing occurs as throughout all the other known members of 

 the family : the males and females do not differ sensibly in 

 coloration or in size. 



The Grey parrot with a red tail does not exist in Liberia in 

 a wild state. Its place is taken by the dull-coloured Psittacus 

 timneh of Sierra Leone, the tail of which is dark grey, and 

 not scarlet. The true red-tailed, ashen-grey parrot begins its 

 range in West Africa on the Gold Coast, and extends thence 

 across the continent to the eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza, 

 to Tanganyika and the northern edge of the Zambezi Basin. 

 The Sierra Leone parrot (Psitiacus timneh) is an uninteresting 

 bird — a dull drab brown, with a dark grey tail that has a 

 tendency to a purplish tinge in some examples. It is rather 



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