Our Coloured Plate



121



5 or 6 feet high wire netting of 1 in. mesh and 18 inches of | in. mesh

put in addition round the bottom—and the enclosure in a position from

which they can see people pass by freely—a mound of rocks or logs

in the middle, and plenty of shelter. They appreciate any sort of

artificial cave made of stones or logs of wood, but appear to prefer it

with two means of exit.



OUR COLOURED PLATE


VERREAUX’S GLOSSY STARLING


• For the opportunity to publish the beautiful coloured plate

illustrating this number of the Avicultural Magazine we are indebted

to our distinguished and esteemed member, Monsieur J. Delacour,

who has kindly placed it at our disposal under circumstances already

explained in an earlier issue of the Magazine. It represents Verreaux’s

Glossy Starling ( Pholidauges verreauxi), a rare and beautiful bird

apparently comparatively recently imported to Eurojm for the first

time. A short note about the species was published by Mr. Seth-Smith

in our Magazine last February on the occasion of the jDresentation of

a specimen to the Zoological Society by Mr. Harold Miller, the

Superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, Durban.


With the admirable plate before us it is needless to describe the

bird. It is needless, too, to enter into the question as to whether it

should rank as a distinct species or merely as a local race or sub¬

species of its northern and better-known relative, the White-bellied

Glossy Starling ( Pholidauges leucogaster), a representative of which

was presented to the Zoological Society for the first time in 1906 by

Dr. ILopkinson, D.S.O., who brought it from the Gambian Province of

West Africa.


Verreaux’s Glossy Starling does not apparently occur in Cape

Colony ; but on the western side of Africa it ranges from Damaraland

to the Congo, where it meets the White-bellied Glossy Starling, and

on the eastern side it goes as far north as Zanzibar, its southern limit

being Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal. In the southern districts

of its range, at all events, it is migratory to a certain extent. In

Damaraland, for example, the species arrives on the approach of the



