342 Walter Goodfellow—Some Beminiscences of a Collector


a remarkable manner after they had moulted in captivity—one entirely

and the other partially—so it is just as well to place it on record here.

Rieffer’s Grass-green Tanager, Psittospiza riefferi, is a robustly built

bird of a crude Brunswick-green, the colour garden seats are often

painted. The shoulders are pale emerald and very glossy ; the cheeks

and thighs bright chestnut; bill, legs, and feet coral red. After they

had moulted the entire green parts became a beautiful blue ; so when

they arrived over here some were still green and others blue. I gave

a skin of the latter to the Natural History Museum, and when the late

Mr. Ogilvie Grant saw it he said if anyone had sent it in he would have

had no hesitation in naming it a new species.


The other bird was the Black-chinned Mountain Tanager,

Compsocoma notabilis, a very poor name to describe such a lovely bird,

for this genus has three exquisite species : the others are victorini and

sumptuosa. I had all three, but only one specimen of notabilis, which

is larger than the other two. The back of this bird is a most unusual

shade of yellowish green with the sheen and appearance of spun glass.

This changed to a very bright mauve. It was one of the first birds

I got when I first started the collection, and it lived right through and

landed here safely.


In addition to the tanagers and other birds were eleven species of

parrots, and these were a source of much enjoyment and com¬

panionship during my stay in Quito. I had rented the upper part of a

large empty house on the mountain-side above the city. On the entrance

side my floor was not much above the level of the road, but on the

other side it was a sheer drop down to the roofs below, with a marvellous

view to the south embracing snowy peaks and a half encircling line of .

volcanoes beginning with Pichincha on the immediate right. On this

side was a glass-covered corridor for the birds, which at one end led

into a small kitchen and at the other a small room which opened on

to a flat roof. The parrots practically had the run of all this side, for

they were all tame and one or two very good talkers. They included

four Pionus menstruus, with heads so exceedingly blue they thought

over here they must belong to another species ; a number (I forget

how many) of the Bronze-winged, P. chalcopterus ; two Coral-billed,


P. corallinus, which had such a powdery bloom all over their plumage



