Sydney Porter—Notes on Birds of Fiji



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awaiting round as though expecting something. I also noticed a large

circle of soapstone, about ten feet across, where the earth had been

cleared away, and this was swept clean. At length he arrived, and with

“ You watch, Sahib ”, he went into the grass house and returned with

a bowl of rice of a particularly soft kind which one could crush between

the fingers. This he scattered on the cleared area. We waited, but

nothing happened ; I retreated further away, but there was no move

on the birds’ part. At length I realized that the birds knew I was

a stranger, so I retreated into a Fijian reed hut just a few yards away

and watched through a parting in the reeds ; that did the trick, and

down they came, hundreds and hundreds of them. And before me lay

the loveliest thing I have ever seen or perhaps shall ever see again

now that my wandering days are over—a living carpet of these feathered

gems who seemed to have taken the transitory hues of the rainbow

into their brilliant plumage and made them a permanency. It was

lovely in the concrete but also in the sentiment, which caused an Indian,

who in our conceit we should call uncultured and untutored, to

extend the hand of friendship for no ulterior motive to these glittering

expressions of Nature, seeking neither to destroy nor to impose his will

upon them but seeking to assist them in their own native sphere. I often

think when I see on 12th August some of our so-called “ best people ”

blazing away on the moors so near my home that if ever our souls are

weighed in the balance as some tell us they will be, that it will not be

the soul of the “ heathen ” Indian that will be found wanting. Truly

we need a society to save some of the savages at home and not those on

the green islands in distant seas. I told a person in Suva about this

little episode, and he was soon anxious to make a bit of money by

capturing the old Indian’s feathered friends ; he asked me for directions,

but if he ever followed them there would be no need for my Indian

friend to fear.


There was a living carpet of about thirty odd feet in circumference

of these gorgeous Finches, though about half of them were in the green

immature plumage lacking the brilliant scarlet head and tail coverts.

Some of the old males seemed to be a wonderful verditer blue. All

were in perfect feather ; evidently they had just moulted.


They fed quietly with no squabbling until a Mynah, thinking that



