THE PARSON FINCH. 177 



" Young plumage duller and more weakly coloured, as if an old 

 bird should be seen through a grey veil. The change of colour takes 

 place, like that of the Zebra Finch, in the eighth to the twelfth week, 

 in that especially the blue-grey of the head, the black of the throat 

 and the black and white of the abdomen come out more strongly and 

 more sharply defined from one another. Generally peaceable, and 

 when breeding not sensitive to disturbances, but, nevertheless, causing 

 havoc in the bird-room, by the destruction of the nests of other birds, 

 like the Ribbon Finch ; breeding is therefore best done in pairs in the 

 breeding cage. Hybrids bred with the Japanese Bengalee and White- 

 headed Nun." 



This little Finch always reminds me of our Blue-tit in its actions; 

 the impudent way in which it hops aboitt, bobbing its head in a self- 

 assertive manner and its mischievous destructiveness are essentially 

 Tit-like. I cannot at all agree with Dr. Russ that it is generally 

 peaceable in a bird- room ; on the contrary, it always fights with males 

 of its own species and one of my cock birds killed a hen Ribbon 

 Finch, and would have done the same to her husband if the latter 

 had not plucked up courage, after some days of persecution, and 

 defended himself. 



The call-note is plaintive, and, not unlike the cry of a kitten, 

 decidedly unpleasant ; but the song is rather pleasing. 



Although the Parson Finch has the appearance, when not actually 

 compared with it, of being as large as the Diamond Finch, it actually 

 is decidedly smaller : if looked at after a journey in a travelling-cage, 

 when the wrapper is first taken off, one sees at once that it is only 

 slightly larger than a Zebra Finch ; but when strutting about in the 

 aviary it seems about as large again. 



Mr. Gould says : " This species is tolerably abundant on the 

 Liverpool Plains, and the open country to the northwards towards the 

 interior. It occurs so rarely on the sea side of the ranges, that I 

 only once met with it during my sojourn in New South Wales. It is 

 doubtless a native of the great basin of the interior, where, like the 

 P. acuticauda, P. personata, and P. leucotis, it frequents those parts of 

 the open plains which abound in grasses, upon the seeds of which 

 and other plants it mostly subsists." 



Mr. North observes : " This species was formerly abundant in 

 the neighbourhood of Rockhampton, but during my visit to those 



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