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Marked individual variations occur ill the period of change of

plumage by birds which possess more than one dress, and

specimens of such species may be found in more or less full

plumage and undress at the same date, as I have myself seen

in Ducks and Dabchicks.


This consideration disposes, I think, of Mr. Oates’ first

argument, but I have better evidence to bring forward.


About the middle of July last year (1897) i' 1 view of my

approaching visit to England on leave, I procured a number of

Houeysuckers in the hope of being able to take some alive to

the Eondon Zoological Gardens, where such birds have never

previously been exhibited. All the birds I kept, with one

exception, were ArachrMfthra zeylonica (y), but I had, andbrought

home safely, one male specimen of the species I am now

considering.


This bird, when I got it, was in heavy moult, and mostly

purple in colour, but to my great surprise (I had taken it for a

young male assuming full plumage) it gradually lost its hue,

and by the time I started for England, in the first week in

August, it was in the non-breeding dress, brown above and

yellow below, with the median purple streak, but still retaining

the orange axillary tufts.


This specimen, unfortunately, only survived its advent at

the Zoological Gardens for about a fortnight (z) and I do not

know whether it was preserved ; if it was, it was probably put in

spirit, as the moult had never been properly completed, and so

the plumage was in bad order. It had, however, lived long

enough to show that the change above referred to does really

take place ; for that captivity could have so affedted the bird as

to change the colour of the actually growing feathers, I am not



(y) Cinnyris zeylonica of the Cat. Brit. Birds Mus. — E d.


(z) I ascribe my small measure of success with living Sunbirds to the fact that I fed

them too much on “ slops’’—sweetened milk or milk-sop. In addition to some such food

given at first it would, I think, be well to supply crumbled yolk of hard-boiled egg mixed

with powdered sugar, and to keep them on this as much as possible, with fruit also. None

of my specimens of Arachnecthra zeylonica survived the voyage but one, and this died in

the train en route from Plymouth to London. I saw this bird bullying the A. asiatica on one

occasion, at least, and I had previously noticed that the latter bird appeared somewhat to

fear its companions. When all were together in a big cage in Calcutta, it kept almost entirely

to one twig in the branch put in this cage, and was in general less active in its movements

than A. zeylonica , though it seemed less sensitive to cold on the voyage. None of the male

A. zeylonica, some of which were moulting, showed any sign of changing their bright

plumage for a duller one, as suggested by Captain Shelley in his account of the species in

the Monograph above quoted. Neither did they molest each other, while I remember

having had to separate two male specimens of A. asiatica which I had previously kept,

because one was getting so badly bullied by the other. — F. F.



