on the Blue Niltava.



191



rather like an English Robin’s, at others more resembling some bird

of the gorse lands, such as a Stone-chat, etc.


From my fingers he readily took mealworms, although he was

very shy at times ; but he was, just before his death, becoming much

tamer.


In the wild state, this beautiful Niltava is found in China

and Japan. It passes on migration through the Lower Yangtse

Basin, where it arrives at the end of April. It is met with in

numbers among the bamboos of the Lushan hills, and returns in

September.


Mr. F. W. Styan records that it breeds at Ichang in West

China, and Mr. Seebohm, writing on the birds of Tsu-sima, Japan,

shot a solitary male on the 22nd April (Ibis, 1892), when it was

sitting on the branch of a bush, and not at all shy.


M. Kalinowski obtained a female in Corea. It is also seen

in the island of Hainan, which lies opposite the extreme southern

point of the mainland of China and which is separated from it by

a channel only a few miles in breadth.


Mr. Swinhoe, when he wrote on the “ Ornithology of Hong¬

kong,” mentioned that this bird’s native name is, in Cantonese,

“ Moey-Fa-tsoey” ; and that a few occur in Hongkong in April. In

Canton for the first fortnight in April he observed them as remark¬

ably abundant near the city walls. “ Almost every mound,” he

wrote, “ or gravestone, had its blue bird standing erect, on the look-

“ out for passing insects. I was much struck with the appearance

“of a brown bird of similar habits and seen in similar positions;


this I found to be the female of the Blue bird ; the one I shot

“ being an almost uniform olive brown plumage.”


It is just that, the charming contrast so often to be found

between males and females of different species, each one setting off

the beauty of the other. One of the most striking examples is

perhaps to be seen in the two sexes of the Purple Yellow-legged

Sugar Bird, where the male is like a sapphire, and the female a green

tourmaline.


The description of the female of the Blue and White Niltava

is as follows :—Bill, blackish brown ; legs, greyish brown ; iris, dark

brown; inside of mouth, yellowish flesh colour ; upper parts, olive



