on the Paradise Flycatcher. 305


adult bird, with four long white tail feathers, black shafted and

black edged.


I think the Eastern sub-species, affinis, is a more beautiful

bird than the Western form, Terpsiphoneparadisea paiadisea,w\wc\\

has no black markings or black shafts to the feathers. The

border of mourning seems to add to the intense whiteness of the

rest of the plumage and make it contrast even more vividly with

the velvet black head and neck.


Probably the Burmese Paradise Flycatcher also has the

tail feathers next the central rectrices more often, and moie

fully, developed than the Indian form in which it is rare to find

more than the central pair lengthened.


Their habits, too, are rather different, for T. p. paradisea

is principally found haunting and breeding in Mango Groves or

other groves of big trees, with little or no undergrowth, whereas

T. p. affinis is undoubtedly a bird principally of the bamboo

jungle, though it may also be found in dense evergreen forest and

equally often in the secondary growth which springs up directly

laud cleared in virgin forests and cultivated, is once more allowed

to lapse into wildness.


Undoubtedly from a picturesque point of view, the deep

green foliage of the huge Mango trees forms the best background

to the whiteness of this bird’s plumage, against which it flickers

and shimmers in flight like sotue weighty tuft of gossamer

blown along in the sunlight. Against the dull pale yellow of the

bamboo jungle the bird is hardly noticeable, unless, as is rarely

the case, it flies high enough to get against the green tops

instead of flitting in and out amongst the yellow stems.


After I had had him with me for about eighteen months, I

got my white dandy a little red iuate of a wife and they soon palled

up and became quite a devoted couple, but they never shewed

the slighest inclination to build or undertake the cares of a

family, though she dropped one or two eggs on the floor of

her aviary; for she, alas! was never tame like her husband,

and had to be kept always in a cage, but it was a large

one, well fitted with suitable places for building, a clump of

pigmy Bamboos, living and thriving in a pot in a corner of her

home. I never saw the male posturing or displaying in the cage



