When Skins
Are Exposed To The Light The Yellow Fades Into Dull White, From
Which Circumstance It Derived Its Specific Name.
About six of the
innermost of these plumes on each side have the midrib elongated
into slender black wires, which bend at right angles, and curve
somewhat backwards to a length of about ten inches, forming one
of those extraordinary and fantastic ornaments with which this
group of birds abounds.
The bill is jet black, and the feet
bright yellow. (See lower figure on the plate at the beginning of
this chapter).
The female, although not quite so plain a bird as in some other
species, presents none of the gay colours or ornamental plumage
of the male. The top of the head and back of the neck are black,
the rest of the upper parts rich reddish brown; while the under
surface is entirely yellowish ashy, somewhat blackish on the
breast, and crossed throughout with narrow blackish wavy bands.
The Seleucides alba is found in the island of Salwatty, and in
the north-western parts of New Guinea, where it frequents
flowering trees, especially sago-palms and pandani, sucking the
flowers, round and beneath which its unusually large and powerful
feet enable it to cling. Its motions are very rapid. It seldom
rests more than a few moments on one tree, after which it flies
straight off, and with great swiftness, to another. It has a loud
shrill cry, to be heard a long way, consisting of "Cah, cah,"
repeated five or six times in a descending scale, and at the last
note it generally flies away.
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