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Sydney Porter—Wanderings in the Far East



pastel shades, the feathers being extraordinarily soft and downy.

There is a cap of jet black, the rest of the plumage being a very pale

and delicate grey almost lavender on the breast, the wings and tail

being very pale azure blue, the long tail feathers tipped with white.

The bill, which is black, is singularly slight for a Crow-like bird.


This species must not be confused with the Chinese Blue Pie

(Urocissa erythrorhyncha), a very much larger and altogether different

bird which, though not as plentiful in its native country as the subject

under discussion, is more frequently kept by the Chinese and also more

frequently imported into this country. In fact I have never known

of the Azure-winged Magpie to be offered for sale here, at least not

in my time, though it may have been before the War. The first


1 ever saw alive were in our President’s aviaries, and the sight of these

lovely graceful pale blue birds increased my desire a hundredfold to

possess them. On arriving in China my immediate desire was to get

hold of some of these birds, but as mentioned before, in this I was

disappointed, and I left sad at heart thinking that I should never

have my wish fulfilled, but less than four months after my arrival

back in England my proverbial luck in getting the birds I want held

out. A few days before these notes were penned or rather typed, I

received a note from the Chinese cook who had been on the ship I came

home on, saying, “ I send you 6 piece bird book 1. 4 piece bird book 2.


2 piece book 3 ! ” This referred in a vague way to some pictures of

birds which I had shown him in a Japanese bird book. I hadn’t the

remotest notion as to what kind of birds they would be. Imagine my

surprise and joy some days later when I received three bamboo cages,

one containing four Chinese Black-naped Orioles, another two very

rare Bose Pinches, the Kamtschatkan Scarlet Finch ( Erythrina erythrina

grebnitskii) and a Formosan Rose Finch ( Erythrina vinacea formosana ),

the latter clad in a garb of exquisite deep wine red, which colour I have

only seen before in some varieties of pelargonium , but last of all in

the largest cage were six baby Azure-winged Magpies, all exceedingly

dirty but clamouring very noisily for food, what a thrill ! I raced

back from the station where I had been to fetch them and soon had

my treasures in a warm indoor aviary and in a few minutes all the

Magpies had had a thorough bath and in a few days’ time they were



