on the Pintailed Nonpareil.



297



The late Mr. Wiener was of opinion that delicacy in any

bird was always attributable to the lack of some article of diet;

he expressed this opinion in the case of the Gouldian Finch,

which we now know to be quite hardy and long-lived if kept

during the summer months and through the early frosts in an

outdoor aviary ; moreover young birds born under these con¬

ditions are as robust as any other Grassfinch. Nevertheless I

consider it only right to try every means to lengthen the lives

of our birds, and therefore when my first two Pintails, fed upon

paddy-rice, white millet, spray-millet, canary, and with a large

patch of turf to pick over, died in three weeks, I determined to

try different food with the pair bought subsequently ; I therefore,

in their case, substituted oats for paddy-rice, and wrongly

attributed their greater longevity to that cause. With those given

to me later I gave oats mixed with the rice, but found that only

the paddy was eaten: then I saw in Mr. Frank Finn’s excellent

little book “ Pets and How to keep them ” that he recommended

fruit—orange and banana as a necessary food for these little

finches. I gave them orange, banana, and later grapes and red-

currants, but not one of them took the least notice of these

delicacies; they simply confined their attention to the paddy and

millet; and, unlike Gouldian Finches, they evidently much

preferred the white to the spray millet.


The Pintailed Nonpareil is an interesting little bird from

the fact that there are (as in the Gouldian Finch) two types of

male; and, unless the different coloration is due to age in the

latter sex, also two types of female.


The ordinary male, with sap-green upper surface, crimson

rump and tail, smalt-blue forehead, sides of face, throat and fore

chest, golden-brown to cinnamon fore-breast, sides, flanks, thighs,

and (paler) under tail-coverts and bright scarlet hind breast and

abdomen, is well known to us all, but the male which I turned

out moulted from the young plumage into a bird of a much

deeper green above with golden ochreous rump and tail (the

latter becoming blackish long before the extremity), the forehead

very faintly bluish, the breast much more smoky and the

abdominal patch bright golden ochreous instead of scarlet.


The less gaudy female of the ordinary type is also well-



