on the Sexes of Liothrix lutea.



131



monotonous whistle repeated four or live times, and the reply of the

cock a short musical phrase consisting of from seven to nine notes.


Later, as the species became more and more abundant in the

bird-market, one naturally wished to be able to distinguish male from

female at sight: crowded together in the dealers’ cages Liothrix is

not always ready to respond to the whistled imitation of the female

call-note by the would-be purchaser. In Russ’ “ Handbuch fur

Vogelliebhaber ” no information was available to assist the student,

but in his later work “ Die Fremdlandischen Stubenvogel ” Yol. II.,

published in 1899, detailed descriptions of both sexes were given.

Unfortunately both males and females of this species vary so con¬

siderably, that one only becomes perplexed when comparing examples

in one’s possession with such descriptions : they do certainly give

one a general idea that males are in all respects brighter than females,

which is correct when one compares the brightest examples of each

sex, but they do not indicate all the characters by which a brilliantly

coloured female can be distinguished from a male not in its most

showy plumage.' 1 '


With a view to studying these points more thoroughly I took

advantage of an offer made to me by a friendly dealer about 1899 to

secure three dozen examples at an extremely low price : and I asked

him to pick out the most varied specimens, which he evidently did. Of

course I had no intention of keeping the whole thirty-six permanently,

therefore when all were in perfect condition I set to work to sort

them out into what appeared to be undoubted pairs : these had a

most convincing aspect, and I was so satisfied with the result that I

let many of my friends have them. The purchasers were well

satisfied, both with the beauty of the specimens and the reasonable

price, but to my astonishment not one of those three dozen birds ever

sang: no doubt the cocks had all been weeded out of the consign¬

ment before any of the birds left the hands of the importer, and thus

the low price was accounted for: they were all hens.


An experience such as the foregoing would probably dishearten

many men ; but I hate to be beaten, and therefore still continued to


* The white tips to the upper tail-coverts are described as a white band

across the tail, and for long I doubted the constancy of that character.



