Correspondence



337



CORRESPONDENCE, NOTES, ETC.


BLUE TAHITI LORY


Madam, —I have been the proud possessor of a skin of the rare Tahiti

Blue Lory for some years, and it was a great pleasure to see the coloured plate

in the March number of the Magazine with M. Delacour’s article.


Quite recently I had the good fortune to see three live specimens in the

private aviary of Mr. W. J. Sheffler, of Los Angeles, who has had the birds

for nearly a year. They were brought over by Mrs. Fredrika Bonestell, of

Oakland, and are the only live specimens in the United States. They are two

males and one female, in splendid condition, kept in small cages. Mr. Sheffler

fully hopes to breed them, and I think that the conditions here are most

favourable, more so in Southern California than in Europe. After having

tried with no success to get the little Lories to eat almost every kind of fresh

fruit, the only fruit it was found they would take are fresh pears procurable

here all the year ; they are also fed daily with boiled milk and honey. Lately

it has been noticed that they are ready to mate, but the reluctance of the

female has necessitated their being separated for the present.


Dr. Derscheid, of Brussels, remarking on this beautiful plate by Roland

Green, says that his paintings are unsurpassed by any other, except perhaps

the paintings by the late Fuertes and some of those by Wilhelm Kuhnert;

which opinion I share. However, I should like to mention some of the other

bird artists whose work is held in very high esteem. Perhaps not so well

known in Europe, but a painter of the first rank in America, is the sportsman-

naturalist, Major Allan Brooks, of British Columbia. His work shows a

strong influence of that wise old master, Joseph Wolf ; his favourites I should

imagine are the larger birds, such as the Waterfowl and birds of prey, while

those paintings published in a recent National Geographic Magazine are not,

in my opinion particularly his best productions.


Jaques, of the American Museum of Natural History, had the enviable

opportunity of studying the birds in their natural surroundings in South and

Central America, and his recent work, reproduced in Dr. Murphy’s Oceanic

Birds of South America, evolves a style quite different to that of his colleagues.


Archibald Thorborn is perhaps best for British birds, whereas H. Gronvold,

illustrator of many scientific papers, has a special talent for infusing bird

skins with motion and life ; however, I must say his best work are the Harriers,

and he once told me when he was illustrating Kirke Swann’s Monograph of

the Birds of Prey that he had during his youth observed the Harriers closely

and intimately in his native Denmark.


The readers of the Avicultural Magazine must recall the beautiful plate

of the Glittering Copper Pheasant in the June issue by S. Kobayashi. To me

this particular painting is just as beautiful, if not more so, than any of those

of Fuertes or Wolf. No birds from shapeless barnyard fowl to the fast flying

Swifts escape his talent if he can but see them when they are alive. He gained

his first distinction amongst the English readers for the rare Korean Sheldrake,

reproduced as the last plate in Phillips’s Monograph of the Duchs, and he has

of late contributed a great many plates to my own Birds of the Philippine

Islands.



Marquess Haciiisuka.



