Little Bird 
Friends. 
THE BIRD WORLD. 
(140) 
men, possibly it is so with that of the birds also. 
But after nearly six months’ study I made it 
out. What Radium is never tired of repeating 
is, “ Have you noticed my tail ? ” I must say 
this discovery was rather a shock to me ! 
Radium and Toff. 
Radium’s great friend is Toff. He is really 
passionately fond of the little fellow and has an 
immense admiration for his singing. I do not 
mean the monotonous roo-too-too, but his real 
little song, that has a compass of three or four 
notes. When he starts this, Radium flies 
o him directly, and stands near him, per¬ 
fectly motionless. At first Toff was half 
frightened and did not much like it, but 
now he is rather pleased with the compli¬ 
ment, and is hurt if Radium is otherwise occu¬ 
pied, and does not come and listen. Radium, 
as I said, stands quite motionless, like a stuffed 
bird, staring at Toff. Then he. gives a sudden 
jump and comes nearer. Then, if Toff’s singing 
still continues, he jumps so near that their beaks 
touch; Toff pecks Radium’s nose, and Radium 
pecks Toff’s nose. They fly apart, and the per¬ 
formance is over for the time. But it is really a 
most amusing sight, and I am sure you would 
laugh very much if you could see it. One very 
pleasant thing about Radium is that he is always 
in colour. He does not lose his beauty for six 
months out of the year as so many foreign 
birds do. 
Something About His Home. 
I have been trying vety hard to “imagine” 
Borneo, the place where the prettiest of all my 
birds come from. But I cannot do it. I don’t 
know how it is, but I cannot conjure up any 
ideas about Borneo at all. So I must just repeat 
to you what I have heard about it, and then I 
hope you will be more successful. It is the 
largest of the East Indian islands. The in¬ 
habitants are chiefly Chinese and Malays, with 
a mixture of the native population. It is a fer¬ 
tile island; coffee, cocoa-nuts, tobacco, and sago 
are cultivated, and here also are the extensive 
fields of rice over which the Pintail Nonpareils 
and other brightly-coloured birds hover in their 
search for food. 
(To be Continued.) 
A Promising Youngster- 
Bird Lovers’ 
Photo by'jf H. Bernard] [Guernsey 
Good photographs of Canaries are very scarce 
considering how very common the birds are, so 
many readers of The Bird World will look with 
interest on such a very successful photo of this six- 
week’s old bird, taken by his owner, who lives 
in Guernsey. 
Library. 
Birds of the Countryside, a Handbook of Familiar 
British Birds. By F. Finn, with 12 coloured plates 
and 118 photographic illustrations. London, 1907: 
Hutchinson & Co. ; 5s. net. 
Of the making of books—on British birds—there 
is no end; but there is always a welcome for one 
which aims at guiding the beginner through his 
initial difficulties in identifying his feathered ac¬ 
quaintances. The present work is designed to do 
this, and can certainly claim to be written in a 
clear and readable style, and is almost entirely free 
from technicalities—those bugbears of the amateur. 
Mr. Finn has even succeeded in giving us a chapter 
on classification couched in language which anyone 
of ordinary intelligence can follow. The book is 
arranged according to the localities in which the 
birds are likely to be found, only species familiar 
by sight or reputation being here dealt with, though 
some rare visitants find a place in the classificatory 
chapter at the end. The coloured plates are of re¬ 
markable beauty, and have mostly been devoted to 
common birds, in the beginner’s interests again, of 
course; some of these pictures have already ap¬ 
peared in “Cage Birds,” acknowledgment of which is 
duly made in the preface. The photographic illustra¬ 
tions are not all of equal merit, but few fail to be 
clearly recognisable, and some are nature-pictures of 
great interest notably those of the Reed-Warbler 
and the Great Bustard, while in the comparatively 
few taken from stuffed specimens, the effect is usu¬ 
ally good. Altogether we think that it will be gener¬ 
ally recognised that this book is very good value for 
the money, and as it is of a handy size, should have 
a wide circulation. 
