240 FOREIGN FINCHES IN CAPTIVITY. 



THE BLACK-HEADED MANNIKIN. 



Munia atricapilla, VlElLL. 



THIS very common, but handsome little bird, inhabits the Himalayas, 

 Central India, Burmah and the Malay Peninsular : in colouring 

 it is so precisely like M. malacca in both sexes, with the exception of 

 the white of the under-surface being replaced by bright chestnut, that 

 it would be mere waste of space to give a full description of it. So 

 far as I am aware, however, it never attains to the size of old males 

 of M. malacca. 



The young are brown, slightly tinted with chestnut on the wing- 

 coverts, the head somewhat greyish, with the cheeks and under parts 

 dull buff- coloured. At the first moult the adult colouring appears, 

 excepting that the black median longitudinal belt on the breast and 

 abdomen is not at all, or only slightly indicated ; anyhow that was the 

 case with young birds which my sister brought me from India, on 

 April i3th, 1887: at the second moult it appeared. 



As already stated, this was one of the first species of Foreign 

 Finches which I kept, and I have never since been without it. It is 

 one of the hardiest, and most long-lived, of all the species of Munia; 

 though, in this particular, it has to yield the palm to the White- 

 headed Mannikin (M maja). 



Jerdon calls this " The Chestnut-bellied Munia," and states that 

 it replaces M. malacca in the north of India, " being found throughout 

 Lower Bengal, and all along the foot of the Himalayas as far as the 

 Dehra Doon ; and also in some of the more wooded adjacent districts, 

 but it would appear to be rare in the open country of the N. W. 

 Provinces. I have seen specimens from the Eastern coast north of 

 Madras, and Mr. Layard procured it in Ceylon, but it is certainly rare 

 in Southern India. It is much more common in the countries to the 

 eastward, Assam, and Burmah as far as the Tenasserim provinces, 

 southwards of which it is replaced by M. sinensis, which wants the 

 black abdominal stripe altogether." 



There seems, however, to have been some confusion in the 

 identification of the species when Jerdon wrote. He continues as 



