Sydney Porter—Wanderings in the Far East



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to the excessive cold and the dust, I was unable to see much of Man-

chukuo during my stay there. Dairen, the chief exporting city of the

Japanese controlled province of Manchukuo, a straggling nondescript

place of no particular interest, boasts of only one bird shop kept by an

old Japanese woman and her semi-imbecile son. Contrary to the

general impression that the Japanese are one of the cleanest races,

this shop was—I was going to say excessively dirty, but it was not the

shop but the cages. It must have been months since some of them

were cleaned out. A great many cages contained dying and dead birds,

and the cause of death appeared to be lack of food. Here I secured

one of the gems of my collection, a bird which had intrigued me since

my youth, the lovely Japanese Blue Flycatcher (Cyanoptila cyano-

melana), a Bobin-like bird of deep shining blue with a black throat

and white underparts. It reminds one of an American Blue Bird but

is more beautiful.


There were many other birds which I was greatly tempted to buy,

but having so many I had to restrain myself. There was a very fine

specimen of Davison’s Ground Thrush (TUrdus sibiricus davisoni),

a very un-Thrushlike bird of uniform dark grey with a very conspicuous

white eyebrow streak. It looked very much like a giant Wood-Swallow.

There were quite a few Warblers, some of these being Gray’s Grasshopper

Warbler (Locustella fasciolata). These in common with all the other

“ soft-bills ” were in fine condition and were fed on a paste made of

ground insects and given in a very liquid state.


There were many Zosterops of different sorts, including both the

Chinese and Japanese, but for the main part these did not look in

very good condition. Of Finches and Buntings there were many, they

included Chinese and Japanese Meadow Buntings, Kusset Sparrows,

Bose Finches, Hoary Bedpolls, Japanese Bullfinches, Chinese Siskins,

and many others, including exotics such as Budgerigars, Zebra Finches,

and a single Golden Pheasant and a few talking Mynahs.


I cursed myself for being such a fool as to wander into these bleak

and inhospitable regions in the winter time for no apparent reason

whatever when I had friends in tropical lands where I would have

been received and made welcome. Already I had lost some of my

birds through pneumonia, including my best Buby-throat, and the



