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Edward Boosey—Gentlemen only



The other two representatives of the Bunting family in the aviary

are an American Nonpariel—a lovely bird when first imported, but too

often losing his original bright scarlet breast colour in captivity—

and an Indigo, the beauty of whose blue livery is sufficiently vouched

for by the fact that the Niltava deigns to treat him as a rival and

chases him about—though with no serious results—if the two happen

to meet.


This habit birds have of chasing about and treating as rivals

other birds generically unrelated to them, but possessing the same

colour scheme, has been frequently observed and is not hard to

understand. A Shama, which sang very sweetly when first put in the

aviary is now moulting hard and is seldom seen—preferring apparently

to spring the full glory of his long black and white tail as a dramatic

surprise on his companions, rather than to risk an anti-climax by

appearing among them with it but half grown.


Whether he will be a bully later on I cannot tell, but at present

he is, naturally, quite peacable. A Giant Whydah is just in the process

of doing his miraculous transformation scene from a large dull-coloured

Sparrow-like bird to a fantastically beautiful creature of glossy black,

relieved with red shoulder patches and graced with a many-shafted

tail of inordinate length which undulates in flight with a gracefulness

of which the bird seems well aware, as he flies to and fro in the aviary

with matchless, if a trifle self-conscious, buoyancy.


He has made a sort of playground on top of one of the bushes

and does mysterious and engrossing things there, puffing himself up

the while and singing all the time with apparent terrific effort but

no audible result except a somewhat harsh grating sound.


A Blue-winged Siva—a pleasing little cafe au lait and pale blue

bird—-hero-worshipped the Pekin Robin from the start, but the latter

was, at first, somewhat bored by his attentions and obviously disliked

being constantly followed about by his adoring companion. Now,

however, the two are friends even to the extent of being on preening

terms, indeed, it’s quite possible that the Blue-winged Siva is a hen

and has no rightful place in my bachelor aviary, for the sexes are

hard enough to distinguish !



