302



J. Delacour—The Green-faced Parrot Finch



in 1936 in the New York Zoological Park. Many American ornitholo¬

gists had obtained specimens ; on the whole, they did badly and most

of them died in the bird shops. However, some survived and even

nested, as it happened, in Mr. W. J. Sheffler’s aviary in Los Angeles

in 1936.


At the same time, this bird was noticed by ornithologists in Manila,

where they were sold in great numbers in the streets. But they were

thought to be either imported birds that had become naturalized, or

migrants. Both assumptions sound most improbable.


The close study that we made of dead and live specimens in California

made us conclude that it was a new and distinct species of the genus

Erythrura, and we described it in the Bulletin of the B.O.C. for January,

1937, under the name of Erythrura viridifacies. It is the only member

of that genus in which the cock has an entirely green head, without any

red or blue markings. The opposite plate will, better than words, give

an idea of the colour and shape of the bird. It is evidently more closely

allied to the Pintail Nonparail ( E . prasina), from Malay, than to any

other Parrot Finch. Like the Pintail, it seems difficult at first to

accustom it to captive life, but, once established, it lives well on a

simple diet of seeds. There is a specimen now in the London Zoological

Gardens, which was kindly presented to us by Dr. R. A. Woods of

Los Angeles.


It is to be hoped that a consignment of these pretty birds will

sometime reach Europe.


The fact that an apparently common bird, living near a large town,

has long remained unnoticed is not so astonishing as it might seem.

The bird probably inhabits long grass, paddies, and marshy ground,

where little collecting is ever done, and it is easy for it to hide. A

similar case is that of the Eastern Avadavat, the so-called “ Chinese ”

(Amandava a. punicea), which is exported each year from Saigon by

the thousands, but has only once been collected wild by one of us,

with great difficulty. Only native bird-catchers, knowing the habits of

the birds perfectly, and their seasonal movements, can find them

in numbers.



