i 5 4 THE BIRDS OF ETHIOPIAN AFRICA 



headed P. fuscicapillus, while Levaillant's parrot (P. robustus) is South African. 

 The grey parrots are likewise exclusively African, with near relatives in the vasa 

 parrots (Coracopsis) of Madagascar and the Comoro and Seychelle Isles, the other 

 member of the group, the black parrot (Dasyptilus pesqueti), being Papuan. Grey 

 parrots are by no means strong flyers, although expert climbers, and spend most 

 of their time in trees. They are social birds only in the breeding-season, keeping 

 at other times apart from one another ; they feed chiefly on stone-fruits and berries, 

 but will sometimes make raids into plantations of young maize and rice. The 

 typical grey parrots may be recognised by the long, compressed beak, the short, 

 square tail, half as long as the wings, and the general presence of bare patches 

 on the sides of the head. To this group belongs the ordinary grey parrot 

 (Psittacus erithacus), the typical representative of the entire order, and a 

 native of West and Central Africa. When once tamed, this familiar bird 

 adapts itself better than other species to a life in captivity. The general colour 

 of the plumage is grey, darker in the young than in the adult, but the tail is 

 red, the naked face whitish, the beak black, and the eyes brown in young birds up 

 to the third year, but afterwards yellow. In Liberia and Senegal this species is 

 replaced by the Timneh parrot (P. timneh), a smaller bird with a wine-red 

 tail, and the ridge and base of the upper half of the beak pale flesh-colour. The 

 love-birds form a group of small parrots scarcely larger than sparrows, with very 

 short rounded tails and green plumage, restricted to Ethiopian Africa and 

 Madagascar. The typical love-bird (Agapornis pullaria), which is common to 

 West and East Africa, is green in colour, with an orange-red face, whereas 

 in the rosy love-bird (A. roseicollis) of South-west Africa the colour is 

 green above and yellowish beneath, with a red forehead, rosy cheeks and 

 throat, and blue rump and median tail-feathers, the other feathers of the tail 

 being red with bVue tips. The Indian ring-necked parraquet (Palaeornis 

 torquatus) is known to have flown ashore from ships anchored in Table Bay, 

 and has now established itself over a considerable part of South Africa, and 

 from this fact it has been suggested that the parraquet now found in Central 

 Africa originally reached the country in the same manner. This equatorial 

 parraquet differs, however, from the typical Indian bird by the shorter wings 

 and slighter beak, and is accordingly regarded by some naturalists as a distinct 

 species, under the name of P. docilis. 



Among the owls of Ethiopian Africa, special mention may be 

 made of Pel's fish-owl (Scotopelia peli), whose range extends across 

 the continent from the Gabun to Nyasaland, as the typical representative of a 

 genus with three other species confined to the region under consideration. In 

 addition to its bare legs and brown eyes, this owl is characterised by the dark 

 brown bars on the rufous upper-parts and the dark blotches on the fawn-coloured 

 under surface. The other three species are West African. The eared owls are 

 distributed over nearly the whole of Africa, the Cape species (Asio capensis) 

 ranging into southern Spain as well as Arabia and Madagascar. The white-eared 

 owl (A. leucotis), on the other hand, is confined to Africa. In another group 

 the pale eagle-owl (Bubo lacteus) is unknown on the west coast, where its place is 

 taken by B. shelleyi, B. leucostictus, and two other species ; while the spotted eagle- 



