Little Bird 
Friends. 
( I 39) 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
Little Bird Friends. 
A HISTORY RELATED BY MISS H. B. RUTT FOR YOUNG BIRD LOVERS 
(Continued froi7i ft. 108.) 
CHAPTER V. 
Radium, The Pintail Nonpareil. 
Now we come to the most beautiful and most 
uncommon of all my birds. 
“ A bird of rare and radiant hue, 
Of colours wooed from sunset sky, 
Or rainbow-tinted drops of dew— 
With such no human art can vie.” 
He is not quite so large as Lapis Lazuli, but 
I am afraid I shall be quite unable to give you 
by mere words any idea of the beauty of his 
plumage. Even a coloured picture can scarcely 
do this, as the feathers are so lustrous and 
shining. The top of his head, his back, and his 
wings are a bright sage-green, his face and 
throat a lovely blue, which shades off gradually 
into a light crimson, and again into a golden 
fawn-colour, but so delicately that you cannot 
say where one colour ends and the next begins. 
His wings are rather shorter than those of most 
birds, so that none of the slender and very curi¬ 
ous tail is hidden. This is crimson, with the 
two middle feathers, which are edged with black, 
much longer than the others, ending in a sharp 
point like a needle. 
A Pleasant Surprise. 
When I bought him he was quite young; he 
must have been a mere baby when he was caught 
and sent over the seas to England. He was still 
in his dull-looking nest-feathers, the bright col¬ 
ours only just beginning to show. I was not sure 
what kind of bird he was; so imagine my sur¬ 
prise when I saw his tail, which was only about 
an inch long when he arrived, growing and 
growing, till at last it ended in a spike ! His 
beak is black, and his legs almost flesh colour. 
This is curious, too, because, as a rule, if a bird 
has a dark beak it has dark legs, if a light beak 
it has light legs. 
He comes from the East Indies, most likely 
from Borneo. I have been told that a good 
many of these lovely birds have been sent over 
to this country from time to time, but that very 
few are healthy, and that very few indeed live 
more than a month or so. This is very sad, but 
I am quite in hopes that Radium may live with 
me many years, as he is now a picture of health. 
When they were first sent over here, people did 
not quite know how to feed them. They found 
they did not want insects, so they offered them 
millet and canary seed, which is all that most 
small foreigners need. The birds looked at the 
millet, ate some canary seed, got weak and ill, 
and died. 
The Long-felt Want. 
So at last some sensible man began to ask 
himself what they would be likely to find as food 
in Borneo. He discovered that large quantities of 
rice were grown there. So he offered his Pin¬ 
tail Nonpareil the best and cleanest white rice he 
could buy at the grocer’s. But no, the bird would 
not touch it. So another man, rather more sen¬ 
sible still, suggested that the birds would not find 
it in this condition growing in the fields. So 
then some rice in the husk, or paddy rice as it is 
called, was procured, and that was what the Pin¬ 
tail Nonpareils had been longing for. Radium 
eats lots of it. It looks like small brown oats* 
and is very hard to crack. Inside is the kernel, 
which is the part he eats. But it is not white 
like the prepared grains we use for our rice 
puddings, but yellowish, and by no means tempt¬ 
ing-looking. However, tastes differ, and if this 
is what is needed to secure to Radium health and 
long life, I need hardly say that I shall let him 
have just as much as he likes. 
A Subdued Songster. 
He has nothing that can be called a song, 
only a very soft little trill all on one note, not 
unlike the chirp of a Redpoll; but it is only a 
whistling whisper, so soft that one cannot hear 
it if the other birds are singing. But Radium 
keeps it up almost incessantly, and is immensely 
pleased with himself all the time. Certainly very 
few birds are troubled with over-much modesty; 
they all “ fancy themselves ” tremendously. The 
larger kind of birds are just the same. Have 
you ever noticed the expression on the face of a? 
white Duck? Self-conceit is writ large all! 
over it. 
Proud of His Tail. 
But what Radium is proudest of is his tail. 
Of course it is uncommon, but it is very narrow 
and thin, though extra long. If he only knew 
it, his charming face and breast are far more 
lovely. But he doesn’t think so. His one idea 
is to show off his tail, and when he sees glances 
of admiration thrown at him, he twists his tail 
sideways, almost at right angles with his body, 
so that you cannot help seeing it. For a long 
time I puzzled as to what his soft little trill 
meant, always going on and always the same. 
His is such a sweet, noble face, that surely this- 
thing that he repeats so often must be some 
noble saying. I had had him for nearly six 
months before I could make out what it was he 
said. As some excuse for my dulness, I must 
tell you that the languages spoken by the natives 
in the East Indies are very difficult to under¬ 
stand. Well, if it is so with the language of the 
