224



S. Porter—Wanderings in the Far East



I believe that the Lories which are now brought in are looked after

very much better than formerly, though the ones I saw looked for the

main part in very bad condition and, by the way the ones I pur¬

chased ate when given decent food, they appeared to have been

starving.


Sometimes, rare and beautiful insect-eating birds find their way

into the shops, usual birds caught by natives and sold to the dealers

for a few cents. These linger for a few days and eventually die of

starvation unless purchased in the meantime by some one who knows

something about them.


Quite a few of the exquisite little Hanging Parrots are usually

offered for sale. When first caught they are wonderful, but they soon

droop and die on the usual diet of boiled rice.


There are no more lovely members of the Parrot family than these

multi-coloured feathered mites, less than half the size of a Lovebird.

Their colours are vivid scarlet, Cambridge blue, intense grass green, and

golden yellow. They must be seen just after they are caught to be

fully appreciated. The Dutch name for these birds, “ Yleermuis-

papagaai,” is very appropriate and refers to their bat-like habit of

hanging upside down to sleep. In a state of nature the birds feed on

the nectar of the coco-nut flowers. They are fond of “ Tuba ”, as it is

called in the East Indies, a sweet palm juice which the natives gather

by cutting ofi the blossom stalks of the coco-nut palms and collecting

the juice in the joint of a bamboo.


I purchased a few Fireback Pheasants from the dealers’ shops,

but these were always kept very surreptitiously out of the way in some

dark corner as though the owners were frightened of any one getting

to know. Many rare Firebacks were promised, but only a few ever

materialized and these were the Malayan Buff-tailed Crestless. The

ones which I brought back with me were purchased from the dealer

who runs the Singapore Zoo and these consisted besides the species

mentioned, of the Bornean Crested and Viellot’s. I arranged to purchase

some of the rare Bornean Crestless but these died before I could obtain

them from the dealer. I saw in the museum at Singapore the skin of

a very rare crestless species from Sumatra, this is Salvadori’s Crestless

Fireback, in which the male is black with blue reflections like an



