Walter Goodfellow—The Royal Parrot Finch



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old, and all have red heads, but not quite the bright cherry red of adult

birds. Some, probably the older oues, are quite bright blue on the back

and fore breast. It is not a fact as an American orrithologist states (he

was judging only from skins) that they moult straight from the nest

plumage to the adult, for the first change is nothing like so bright, nor

is the body entirely blue. This can be seen by the pair in the Bird

House at the Zoo. Individual birds seem to vary in some particulars

as we caught birds still showing the blue nodules at the gape, while

some of our hand-reared ones lost them even before they were able to

feed alone, and others again still showed them much later. Also the

bills turned black in some cases much sooner than in others from the

same nest. The hen birds according to the same ornithologist are sup¬

posed to have the wings entirely green, while the cock has the wing

coverts the same blue as the body, but we are still uncertain if this is

quite correct.


On 24th January two young ones were brought to me in the nest

which could not have been more than a few hours old. They were so

feeble and tiny, barely an inch long, it seemed impossible to do any¬

thing with them. They were entirely flesh coloured, body, bill, and legs,

and opened a minute oblong mouth with the tips of the bill so slightly

developed as to be all but invisible, but the dark crescent marks on the

palate and the blue spots at the gape were highly conspicuous. I did

my best with them and failed, but they lived for four days.


The island we were on was entirely waterless so far as springs

or wells were concerned. The natives depend upon rain water and

the birds likewise. Fortunately the rainfall is heavy, but at times

they suffer from a shortage.


We found the regias extremely difficult to get on to seed. At one

time we thought we might have to bring them home as fruit-eating

Finches. It was no good trying to starve them on to it, we did this for

several hours first thing every morning, neither would they take soaked

seed. For weeks we looked in vain for husks, then after a time a few

grains of canary seed were eaten by a few, but not enough to keep them

alive. At first we gave them their natural figs cut in half, and these they

ate in quantities, but made a dreadful mess of the cages and them¬

selves by throwing the outer red part about which stained everything



