702 The Philippine Journal of Science 1921 
plumage, recalling the corresponding plumage of Munia jagori . 
Later the same day, while crossing Puente Colgante, I met an 
old man with two bamboo cages containing a hundred or more 
of these birds, all in young plumage. This man told we that he 
caught these birds near San Vicente, Ilocos Sur Province, and 
that they change to the adult plumage in May. On May 9 I 
again saw this man with a lot of these birds. He was telling 
a crowd how the birds changed plumage and that they nested 
in thick grass on the ground. Perhaps he meant to say near 
the ground. As he was talking to a crowd of Filipinos and not 
to me, I am inclined to the view that he really gets the young 
birds from the nests. If he was telling the truth, the species 
is evidently well established in Luzon, and this is the point that 
I was interested in. 
Erythrura species. 
Mr. L. H. Taft, of the Bureau of Forestry, who is stationed 
at Los Banos, Laguna Province, Luzon, sent four specimens of 
a green-backed ricebird to Mr. E. H. Taylor and under date 
of July 7, 1920, wrote: 
The four birds that you received last week were in very bad condition 
when I found them. A week ago Saturday we started to string a wire 
for the backstop on our tennis court at the school. We failed to finish, 
but left the wire standing up. The next Saturday (June 26) we started to 
finish the job and found that ten of these same birds had evidently flown 
against the wire and suffered an untimely death during the week. Six 
of them were too far gone to send at all (the ants had eaten out their 
throats) but the four I sent in seemed to be O.K. It doesn’t seem prob- 
able that we caught a flock migrating for eight were on one side of 
the wire and two were on the other side. Only one of the men seemed to 
know the bird. He said he had seen many of them in San Carlos, Panga- 
sinan. 
These specimens were unfortunately so badly decayed that 
they could not be skinned, and one was dropped into alcohol. 
In attempting to identify this specimen I felt fairly safe in the 
genus Erythrura and thought that the species might be 
E. trichroa. 10 
On August 20, 1920, the specimen was sent to the United 
States National Museum where Dr. C. W. Richmond with charac- 
ter estic care examined it. As the matter is rather important, 
I quote Doctor Richmond’s comment in full. He said: 
The specimen is in poor condition for determination, and is probaby a 
female or immature bird, which makes a satisfactory identification more 
“Sharpe, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus. 13 (1890) 385. 
