THE HONEY-GUIDES 35 



three cases "a pair of birds— male and female — would start their 

 excited chatter, and both commence to guide in the same direction, 

 following one another from tree to tree. However, m the majority 

 of cases it was just the one bird which guided to the bees' nest, but 

 it was not uncommon for this one bird's chattering to attract a second 

 bird, as often as not of the same sex, when one drew near to the bees' 

 nest, and on a few occasions a third bird was also drawn by the chatter- 

 ing. The appearances of the second and the third birds were almost 

 always in the vicinity of the bees' nest." 



Jackson (1913) was once stalking buffalo when two honey-guides 

 began to chatter near him. When he had gone perhaps 200 yards 

 farther, three of these birds became very noisy. He does not say, 

 however, if the original two were included in the tliree, and in this 

 instance no guiding ensued, as his shooting scared off the birds. 



My own experiences with the guiding habit (23 cases) have always 

 been with single birds. On one occasion, in Zululand, what I took to 

 be a second honey-guide flew across the path of the guiding bird but 

 did not linger or attempt to join it. 



Although there is ordinarilj^ but one honey-guide doing the guiding, 

 not infrequently another individual may come to the bees' nest after 

 it has been opened and robbed, and then feed there with the guiding 

 individual. On the few such occasions on which I have any notes, 

 there was no indication of "possessiveness" on the part of the guiding 

 bird or of "rivahy" or "hostility" between it and the other bird or 

 birds feeding on the spoils. In some cases these extra birds have been 

 of the opposite sex; in other cases they have been found to be of the 

 same sex. In at least one case, in Kenya Colony, communicated to 

 me by J. G. Williams, not only did another /. indicator come to the 

 opened hive to feed, but a lesser honey-guide, /. minor, also joined 

 them. In the eastern Cape Province, Ranger has found these two 

 species coming together at bees' nests, and has seen as many as five 

 and even six of them at one time at a hive. Once he saw two varie- 

 gated honey-guides together with a lesser honey-guide at a bees' nest. 

 However, in many cases it seems that only the guiding individual feeds 

 at the bees' nest, at least in the first minutes after the human accom- 

 plices have left. 



The fact that usually only one bird is involved in any single guiding 

 trip but that others may join it at the opened bees' nest suggests that 

 these others (and possibly still other individuals) probably may hear 

 and recognize the guiding calls but do not try to intrude before the 

 goal is reached. This, in turn, suggests that usually there seems to 

 be nothing in the guiding behavior, either visually or audibly, that 

 acts as a releaser of like behavior in these other individuals. 



