Dr. E. Hopkinson—Sunbirds



147



The British Museum Catalogue, vol. ix, pp. 1-126 (1884), provides

descriptions of all the species known at that date, Shelley’s Birds of

Africa, vol. ii, pp. 10-166 (1900), deals fully with the African species

and contains coloured plates of about ten, while for those of India

there is the third volume (1926) of Stuart Baker’s Fauna of British

India : Birds, pp. 372-418, with one coloured plate {Mthopyga gouldice).


Of course, the number of Sunbirds which have been kept in captivity

form but a minute proportion of the family, which includes about

150 species divided into three or four times as many sub-species, and

out of the 20 or more genera it will be seen that only 9 are represented

to date in Aviculture.


The references given under each entry in the list which follows are

mostly avicultural, and give the sources of my records. The chief are :—


Neunzig’s Fremdlandische Stuben-vogel, Madgeburg, 1921,

pp. 105-111 (here as Nzig.) ; Delacour’s article in Aviculture, 1925,

pp. 251-6, with a coloured plate showing six species (Avic ., i) ; the

Zoo List of Birds, 1929 (G. C. Low), reference to which is indicated

by a Z and the list-number. The pages of our Magazine and of Bird

Notes (here as A.M. and B.N.) also provide their share of the references,

though only the more important ones are included. Perhaps I may

refer to a particular omission, that is A.M., 1918, p. 153, where the

same subject is dealt with, commencing with the days of pre-Mellin

ignorance, when Sunbirds could practically not be kept, so that the

appearance of one on the show bench was hailed as “ unique ”, up to

the year 1911, when the Mellin’s food regime was introduced by

Mr. Ezra and Sunbird-keeping converted from a hopeless business to

the simple one it is nowadays with Mellin or Horlick as the food-basis.


In that article the question was asked who actually first used

Mellin’s food for these birds and where ? We know who introduced

it to England and when, but had it been discovered by another

previously ? As far as I know no definite answer was obtained in

1918 ; perhaps we may get one now.


Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa (Linn)). Z. 616. Hab. : South

Africa. Plates : Shelley, Mon., pi. 5 ; Bird Notes, 1916, pi. 74.

First imported about 1914. Count Segur was apparently the first

to own the species, “ he had two pairs in 1914 ” {Nzig., p. 106),



