176



Walter Goodfellow—The Royal Parrot Finch



“ o ”, and means a “ grass-plucker In some of the villages they called

it “ Taput ” without the final “ i When asked where they were to

be found, they pointed to the great banyan trees. My experience of

other species of the family was that they went in flocks, fed on the

ground, and were easy to catch, so we were inclined to think that we

might still be on the wrong track, but when they told us the Americans

on the yacht “ La France ” had been after the same bird a few years

before, we thought they must be right, as we knew they had collected

skins of regias on this island. We found one might live there for months

or even years and never see a regia, because after all it is true they live

in the tops of trees and feed on fruit. In a way it is practically a fruit-

beating finch. Two traders who had lived there for years had never

seen the bird or heard of it, neither had the only white woman, the

daughter of the pioneer missionary, who was born and brought up on

the island and spoke the language like a native. I mention this to show

how concealed the birds must be in their tree-tops, and this on an

island where the number of species is very small.


There are several kinds of Ficus or Banyan trees growing on the

islands, so one or other is never without fruit, and it is on these the

regias feed. Some of these trees are simply stupendous, but the one

they liked best is called “ nambulifer ” with the accent on the second

syllable, and after that “ naida ”. The others were not of much con¬

sequence so far as their fruits were concerned, and I imagine they

only eat them when times were hard. The “ nambulifer ” was the

size of a large cherry, dark maroon on the outside. The birds bite

through the rather hard outer flesh to get at the tiny fig-like seeds

embedded in a sweet pulp in the centre, which they crack and eat ;

so it is easy to understand why they have such strong bills for their

size. When feeding they pluck a ripe fruit and carry it to a stout

branch, where holding it under their strong claws, peck through the

outer part until they reach the seeds, and each bird always returned

to the same branch it had chosen. By watching this and placing lime

there, was the way they were caught. This was tedious work as they

were only obtained one by one and sometimes for days together none

at all. Of course we had to have native help here, and like all such

people, although they were well paid, quickly tired of the work as the



