184 Sydney Porter—Notes on the Barer Foreign Softhills


possession that they belong to the great order of the Timeliidse or

Babblers, though in appearance they differ a great deal from the rest

of the order, but their demeanour at once places them. Ever active,

cunning, inquisitive, very intelligent with the eye always on the main

chance, these birds seem to have a close affinity to the Jays. Though

dominating all the other birds in the aviary even though they be twice

the size of the Jay-thrushes, they are not aggressive or bullying, always

keeping to themselves but allowing no interference from any other

bird.


Few birds are more adapted for aviary life, easy to feed, hardy,

beautiful even though possessing no brilliant colours, and very

affectionate towards each other, to the extent that one woman

remarked, “ Them be real true Christians, mister, they be so fond of

each other! ”


About the size of an English Jay but with a more slender beak,

these birds are for the most part a very rich olive brown with a golden

sheen, the head, crest, and upper breast is snow white tinged with

grey on the nape ; the head is heavily crested with long, loose feathers

which blow about in the slightest breeze. A jet-black stripe runs

from the base of the beak through the eye to the nape, a combination

of colours which make these birds perhaps the most striking of an

extraordinary family. Their cries, which are typical of the Babbler

family, are not harsh and unpleasant. If a cat happens to be seen

around the aviary the noise and commotion made by the birds is

terrific. They put the rest of the inmates in a state of tension for hours

afterwards. The Timeliidse are by nature watchmen, and in the wild

state very little escapes their vigilant eyes. Should some carnivorous

mammal appear on the scene the whole of the bird population for miles

around is warned. Sometimes when a party of Babblers have

discovered me in the forest or jungle, their cries have been enough

to waken the dead, and bird watching has had to be abandoned for

a great part of that day.


One of the strangest episodes in bird life which I have ever known

concerned a pair of these birds.


An exceptionally fine pair of these birds, which I still have, by the

way, lived during the warmer months in an outdoor aviary inhabited



