I loved this
bird for its song--the peculiar delicate tender opening notes and
trills. In spring and autumn large flocks would occasionally visit our
plantation, and the birds in hundreds would settle on a tree and all
sing together, producing a marvellous and beautiful noise, as of
hundreds of small bells all ringing at one time. It was by the water I
first found their breeding-place, where about three or four hundred
birds had their nests quite near together, and nests and eggs and the
plants on which they were placed, with the solicitous purple birds
flying round me, made a scene of enchanting beauty. The nesting-site
was on a low swampy piece of ground grown over with a semi-aquatic
plant called _durasmillo_ in the vernacular. It has a single white
stalk, woody in appearance, two to three feet high, and little
thicker than a man's middle finger, with a palm-like crown of large
loose lanceolate leaves, so that it looks like a miniature palm, or
rather an ailanthus tree, which has a slender perfectly white bole.
The solanaceous flowers are purple, and it bears fruit the size of
cherries, black as jet, in clusters of three to five or six. In this
forest of tiny palms the nests were hanging, attached to the boles,
where two or three grew close together; it was a long and deep nest,
skilfully made of dry sedge leaves woven together, and the eggs were
white or skim-milk blue spotted with black at the large end.
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