Having read Country Diarist's request for the definition of a popinjay, an English lady residing in Germany wrote the appended notes on German bird lore and sent them to Shanghai: it turns out that the lady was referring to the blue Budgerigar, which the Germans cull Wellen-Sitti a clever talking bird. Country Diarist would like German readers to give him the exact meaning of Wellen-Sittich.
My brother says you would like to know what the blue bird I found in my garden, and called a popinjay, is. The Germans call this bird a Wellen-Sittich—Sittich is one of their names for a parrot (papagei in German) and Wellen because its feathers make a wavy pattern—they are blue (two shades), green, yellow and nearly white. The breast is the main colour and the back of the head and wings have grayish feathers that make a wavy pattern; lower on the back the main colour prevails again, so that the grey wavy part looks like a little coat. The tail is tong and of the main colour. The beak is like all parrots', and under the beak, on each side, are a cluster of feathers ornamented with a row of little spots—these clusters the bird can separate 50: that they look as if it had Lord Dundreary whiskers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.