Отрывок из книги
Maturin M. Ballou
Published by Good Press, 2021
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One variety of the green paroquet has a curious rose-colored ring about its neck, like the turtle-dove, so delicate and uniform as to seem almost artificial. The natives call it the love-bird. The youthful Singhalese women, like those of Japan, take great pains in the arrangement of their ebon-black hair. It was a unique and very pretty sight observed one day in the native district of Colombo, when a pair of live paroquets' heads, forming the apex to a native woman's abundant coil, were seen coquettishly twisting and turning hither and thither. The little beauties were quite content, perched up there amid their mistress' wealth of tresses. They were hardly confined, though their bodies were laid cosily beneath the braids as though resting in their native nest. What a field this tropical isle would have been for Audubon!
One often sees hovering about the gardens and bungalows a little bird as large as an English sparrow, called the Ceylon bird of paradise, but which does not deserve that name. It has a black head, a neutral-tinted body, and a long tail, five times the length of its body, consisting of pure white feathers. Its only marked peculiarity, so far as is apparent, consists in its singular and disproportionate tail. It has a little fretful, discordant twitter, but no connected notes. The Singhalese name for the bird escapes us at this writing.
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