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DIAMOND SPARROW. 5.
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T H E DIAMOND SPARROW.
Stegamfykura guttata, SHAW.
T ATHAM called this beautiful bird the " White-headed Pinch " and gave it the
^ iiame of Fringilla teucorephala, but Dr. Sharpe has rejected the latter on
account of the inaccuracy of the description which accompanies it. It inhabits South
Australia to New South Wales, and north to the Wide Bay District. Miss Marie
Fraser informed me that in Queensland it was extremely common, fljáng out of
the bushes in small companies as one approached ; uevertheless, .since the importation
of Gouldian Finches commenced it seems to have been but rarely imported,
a standing order for a pair having had no result for three years in succession.
The general colouring above is mouse-brown, greyer on the head ; a black
streak from the base of the upper mandible to the eye ; the lower back and upper
tail-coverts fierj' carmine-red ; th-e tail intense black ; luider parts snow-white, with
a broad belt of jet black across the chest ; sides of body black, each feather
marked externally with a snow-white semicircular spot; the entire length
4,';, inches. Beak crimson, legs greyish-brown ; iris red.
The hen differs, as Mr. Abraham.s has pointed out, in its slightly narrower
head and in having the base of the upper mandible nan'owly rose-pink. (In
order to distinguish them readily the birds must be taken up and their heads
held side by side, when there is no difficxilty in discriminating between them).
I had a pair of this species in about 1889 which built in a German Canary
Cage in my small Finch Aviary and laid several eggs ; there were however such
constant disputes between the male and female, that they came to nothing; the
hen would not let the cock enter the uest in the clay time (indeed his repeated
efforts to do so eventuall}- resulted in her killing him), but if he did not come
in directl}' that she began to call him in the evening, she would leave her eggs
and chase him about the a\'iary.
The call-note of these birds is particularly doleful, like that of the Parson
Finch ; but the love-dance of the cock bird is one of the most absurd and at the
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