THE



Avicultural Magazine


THE JOURNAL OF THE

AVICULTURAL SOCIETY



Fourth Series. —Vol. XII.—No. 7All rights reserved. JULY, 1934



THE ROYAL PARROT FINCH


(Erythrura regia )


By Waltek Goodfellow


I think the introduction of this beautiful finch to this country is

quite a landmark in aviculture. Why it has been so long delayed I don’t

know unless it is the difficulty and expense in getting to the far-off

islands where it lives.


It was first described by Dr. Sclater in 1881 from a skin collected

by Captain Kenneth Howard, B.N., on the island of Epi in the New

Hebrides, and this skin and a spirit specimen are still the only ones

in the British Museum. American collectors, however, were out there

a few years ago, and got a good series of skins from the type locality

and other small islands near by, which together form what is known

as the Shepherd Group. It was to these islands Mr. Shaw Mayer and

I went.


For a long time I had had this bird in my mind hoping one day to

be the first to get it alive, but the great drawback was, that these

islands are very poor in bird life, and there was nothing else there to

make it worth while in case of failure. Last year when Mr. Mayer

returned from New Guinea I found he had been considering the same

thing, so we joined forces and set out. I must say though that when

we left England it was perhaps more with the intention of going to


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