58 FOREIGN FINCHES IN CAPTIVITY. 



dusky, with greyish inner edges ; beak and legs pale slate-grey ; upper 

 mandible darker; iris sepia-brown. Length 5^ inches. 



Dr. Sharpe thus describes the hen: "Much duller in colour than 

 the male, and wanting the crimson crest. General colour above brown, 

 including the head; the rump and upper tail-coverts vinous red; wing- 

 coverts like the back ; quills and tail feathers edged with brown ; lores 

 ashy whitish ; ear-coverts brown tinged with vinous ; cheeks and under 

 surface of body pale vinous; browner on the fore-neck and breast. 

 Total length 6A inches." 



The Red-crested Finch is found in Brazil, to Bolivia and Peru and 

 northward to the Amazons and Guiana. 



Mr. E. W. White (P. Z. S. 1882, p. 599) mentions having shot this 

 species "in an open country dotted with thickets of low brushwood, in 

 which it skips about." This is very expressive of the action of 

 Coryphospingus, it moves by long jumps, often using its wings, somewhat 

 after the manner of Liothrix and Accentor. 



Mr. Hudson does not seem to have met with Coryphospingus, for he 

 gives no new facts respecting it in his Argentine Ornithology. 



The dealer who sent my birds home evidently fed them upon a 

 mixture of canary, linseed, and German rape : but I generally gave 

 them canary, white millet, inga seed, and Paddy rice, with which they 

 were less wasteful ; they also had a few mealworms and cockroaches 

 daily. Soft food they did not appear to care for ; though insects of all 

 kinds put them into a great state of excitement, causing the fiery crests 

 on their heads to rise, like that on the head of a Skylark. 



I have never heard these birds sing ; but the call-note, or notes 

 (for there are two) are frequently repeated after the manner of those 

 of our Chiff-Chaff ; only they are low, plaintive, and musical, and sound 

 somewhat like the words " We- two" with a jerkiness in the first word, 

 then a pause and then the " two" As a matter of fact this statement 

 by the birds was hardly correct, for there were more than two in their 

 cage, as I had paired them with my hen Pileated Finches, with which 

 they lived in perfect amity. 



The cage in which these birds were kept measures three feet in 

 length, twenty inches in height, and eighteen in depth from front to 

 back ; a deep nest-box is fixed up in one corner and partly filled with 

 hay and moss : to this snuggery the cock Red-crested Finches occasion- 

 ally retired ; but the chances are that Pileated Finches would breed 

 more readily in some sort of bush. 



Burmeister tells us that the Red-crested Finch " lives in pairs 

 during the summer ; but in winter, in little bands on uncultivated fields 



