34 
HINTS ON CAGE-BIKDS. 
under parts, the brillance of red or yellow patches, are frequent 
characteristics of male-birds. 
Many dealers who do not know intelligently how to .sex birds 
are yet able to pick out pairs with a certain amount of facility. 
They will say, “That’s a pair; you see, that bird looks like a 
female.” The fact is they see the actual difference of outline, with- 
Showing the Differences in Heads of Male and Female of the 
Grey Parrot. 
out being able to say in what that difference consists. It is useful 
to possess this faculty, because it. saves time in catching birds for 
examination out of a number ; but it is not safe to depend upon it. 
The test applied by bird-catchers when netting Larks was a safer 
one. 'They grasped each bird with the hand, saving the broad- 
chested cocks, but killing the narrower-chested hens in the nets, to 
be sold at so much a dozen to the poulterei's. As a bird-catcher 
once said to me, “You can always tell a cock Lark by the feel, 
because it’s a handful.” A seasoned bird-catcher generally knows 
pretty well what he is about. 
Even the best informed and sharpest dealer may sometimes 
make mistakes if he is a bit flurried, or his sight blurred by a 
troublesome liver ; so if you occasionally chance to get the wrong 
sex from an intelligent man do not be too hard upon him. 1 have 
known the best man in the trade to make two mistakes in the sexes 
of birds which he sent to me. In the first instance 1 wrote for a 
pair of white Java Sparrows, and he sent me two bii’ds which 
quarrelled incessantly. As I had received them from so great an 
authority 1 kept, them together in a large flight cage for a year 
withont result. I then wrote and told him that as his first “pair” 
undoubtedly consisted of two cook-birds, I would be glad if he 
would send me an undoubted pair. This he did, but passed on the 
joke of my having tried to breed from two cocks for a whole year. 
However, I turned the tables by replying, “ Quite trne ; but you 
must remember that you sent them to me as a pair.” The second 
error was a more excusable one, there being very little sexual 
difference. 
