Some Grass finches in my Aviary.



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readers I will forbear, — besides which I don’t know anything about

music. I have already dilated all too much on our Diamond finches,

so with the Muses we will join and sing, “ Sic transit gloria guttatae,”

and pass on to the next.


If there is one more charming bird than all the rest it is the

super-elegant, vivacious, charming Long-tailed Grass finch ( Poephila

acuticauda). During the last year or two aviculturists have dis¬

criminated between what used to be the better known Yellow-billed

variety and the more often introduced (recently, at any rate) Red-

hilled variety and called it Hecki. Speaking personally, I much

prefer the latter, and I can detect, or fancy I can, a very distinct

difference in colour as regards the body tint, especially in the chest

and abdomen. In Hecki it is quite a shade darker with a dash of

reddish tinge in it. That and the Red-hill does away with the anasmic

and rather aesthetic appearance of the Yellow-billed variety. To sex

these birds is indeed a puzzle. With all due respect to one or two

dealers who have enlightened me, I don’t believe the size of the

gorget is any criterion at all, and I have, alas, had a good few

through my hands which (whisper it not) have gone to swell

the majority. One hen had a very tragic end. She had three

times been egg-hound, and each time the dry heat treatment had

cured her. But the last was the last, for on letting her out of the

small cage she flew out with a joyous twitter to join her grief-

stricken husband, for he had been inconsolable in her absence, when

she dropped dead, as though shot, with a little thud to the ground.

She never even breathed again. I am no pathologist. I am a

sceptic instead, hut I think we may venture ruptured blood-vessel as

the cause of death. I thought the cock bird would die of grief, but

by a great stroke of fortune I obtained a Yellow-billed hen for him,

and he sits and curry-combs her toupee and kisses her neck all the

livelong day. He is as happy as a king. Long may it last! In

my humble opinion there is only one way of sexing these birds, and

that is by the bill and by the behaviour of the birds towards each

other. True the hen appears a little slimmer as regards head and

neck, and less inclined to “boss” it over the other inmates of the

aviary. But the differences, if any, are extremely minute. It is

hardly necessary to specify the differences in the bill. Suffice it to



