62 BULLETIN 2 08, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



until his return. In one of these instances this took over three- 

 quarters of an hour, in the other about an hour, but, in both, the bird 

 that had led us there with constant chattering and successive flights 

 remained silent and motionless nearby. It actually stayed that way 

 for about an hour more while the natives chopped open and ransacked 

 the hives. Several "old-timers" with whom I have talked in Africa 

 and numerous writers have also found the birds to remain silent 

 about the bees' nest, which gives me reason to think my observations 

 were not atypical. 



However, as intimated above, there are many exceptions to this in 

 the observations, published and unpublished, of others. Thus, in the 

 instance (described in our account of the mammalian symbionts of the 

 guiding bird) when Major Beaton found a honey-guide associated 

 with two ratels demolishing a hive, he was first attracted by the bird's 

 chattering. He found the bird perched well up in a tree directly over 

 the hive, chattering loudly as the ratels worked away beneath it. 

 Skead (1946) recounts an occasion when he was unable at first to 

 find the bees' nest when a honey-guide led him to it and writes: 

 "After I had been searching for about a quarter of an hour the Honey- 

 guide called less and less and eventually gave up altogether and I did 

 not see it again." This implies that the bird was not silent at first 

 in the vicinity of the bees' nest. In a later paper Skead (1951, p. 58) 

 writes that usually on arriving at a hive, the bird perches above it or 

 to one side of it, "calling as before." 



Many years ago at Mariba's Hoek, in the northern Transvaal, the 

 late Austin Roberts and I had what was superficially a somewhat 

 similar experience. We had followed a greater honey-guide through 

 the bush when it made a last short flight to a tree and then stopped 

 chattering and sat erect. We made no move, and in about a minute or 

 two the bird flew around us chattering noisily and then went back to 

 the same tree and again stopped calling. We were unable to find any 

 sign of bees there, but it is probable that there was a nest nearby 

 which we failed to notice. This case raises the possibility that the 

 chattering of the bird at the hive vicinity may be something induced 

 to some extent by the lack of response on the part of the follower. 

 The fact that Skead never made any attempt to open a bees' nest when 

 led to one leaves his observations in more or less the same category; 

 at least they do not settle the possibility. This, however, could 

 hardly be said to apply to the Beaton case, and apparently is equally 

 inapplicable to the following observations by Jackson (1938, pp. 731- 

 733). Sir Frederick was out hunting vath an old Andorobo when a 

 honey-guide began to "guide" them. "After going about half a mile 

 the bird flew on to a small thorn tree growing on the very brink of the 

 quarry, and became more noisy and excited than ever, and on looking 



