loerien.

1798 A. Barnard Jrnl. in A. W. C. Lindsay Lives of Lindsays (1849) III. 408 I began to collect my Cape trifles for my friends at home,—some beautiful loories alive—some still more beautiful swallows dead.

1810 W. J. Burchell Jrnl. 7 Dec. in Trav. Interior S. Afr. (1822) I. ii. 20 In the aviary, I saw the Touracoo, called Loeri by the colonists.

1812 A. Plumptre tr. H. Lichtenstein Trav. S. Afr. I. 195 The cuculus persa, a beautiful bird, called by the colonists loeri or luri.

1850 J. S. Christopher Natal 33 The beautiful and soft-voiced loerie, the golden cuckoo, the green pigeon..and many others too numerous to particularise.

1908 East London Daily Dispatch (S. Afr.) 4 Dec. 4 The vlei-lourie, perhaps better known hereabouts as the ‘rain-bird’, the natives regarding it as a weather prophet.]

1932 Discovery July 230/2 The Louries, magnificent in green, blue and carmine..nest outside the door of the mission [at Kilimanjaro].

1950 Cape Argus 18 Mar. (Mag.) 7/7 Loeries with their beautiful crimson-and-green plumage fill the air with their liquid call.

1957 V. W. Turner Schism & Continuity in Afr. Society x. 293 The woman may dream that her dead relative has appeared to her equipped like a hunter, wearing the red wing-feather of a lourie in her hair.

1971 Evening Post (Port Elizabeth, S. Afr.) 12 June (Suppl.) 5 When we think of birds in general, it is the pleasanter members of that enormous family that come to mind—the brilliantly-plumaged sunbird, the dove, the loerie.