92 BULLETIN 2 08, UNITED STATES NATIONAL AIUSEUM 



to 1^2 minutes. When about to start its call the bird arches its neck 

 slightly, getting its head into a somewhat more horizontal position 

 than it ordinarily has, ruffles the throat feathers slightly, and then 

 calls. As it produces the sound, its body and tail feathers quiver 

 slightly. In the Umtaleni Valley, eastern Cape Province, Ranger in- 

 troduced me to this bird and I spent many hours watching it at fairly 

 close range. Its croaking or pm'ring note is one that would easily be 

 imnoticed as it is quite imavian in quality, and might readily be as- 

 sumed by a passing naturalist to be of insect or amphibian origin. 



The hours of song utterance are greater in this species than in 

 either the greater or the lesser honey-guide. The earliest that I ever 

 heard the bird call was at 5:45 a. m., but the following year Ranger 

 recorded the croaldng song as early as 4:39 a. m,, before daybreak. 

 One morning I kept an accurate count of the song delivery of a bird 

 at a call site and found that from 6:50 a. m. until 8:20 a. m,, when I 

 left, the bird gave its call some 76 times. On another day Ranger and 

 I went to the call site at 9:35 a. m. and neither saw nor heard the bird, 

 but 10 minutes later it flew in from a secondary post, completely 

 silent. As I approached it, it flew back to the secondary post, and 

 called from there at intervals of exactly 1 minute (by watch) until 

 10 a. m. when it returned to its main call post and began calling from 

 there at 10:01 a. m. It kept up calling at 1 -minute intervals until we 

 left at 11:30. The bird was apparently not interested in us, in feeding, 

 or in anything else, but merely sat on the same spot and reiterated its 

 monotonous purring. When "singing" the bird usually seemed to 

 choose the higher branches under the canopy of the tree. In the after- 

 noon I have noted the bird calling only from about 3 to 4:05 p. m., 

 but it is not restricted to these limits, as Ranger recorded it as late as 

 7:10 p. m. in his 1951 field notes. He and Skead had been watching 

 a bird giving its whistle-calls (not the call-site "song") as it worked 

 its way along in a wooded Idoof, and at 6:50 p. m. were astonished to 

 hear the call-site call. "It was heard again and again subsequently 

 as the bird worked its way down-stream, the last being heard at 7:10 

 p. m. The sun had been down for some time when the whistling and 

 croaking were heard. We now have records of this call well away from 

 the caU sites and at a late hour. We also know that they (the birds) 

 move about a very great deal." 



In the summer of 1951 Ranger watched two supposedly male 

 variegatus with call sites about 280 yards apart and found that the song 

 of each bird was audible at the site of the other. If the sound was 

 detectable to the human ear it probably was to the birds as well. In 

 Ranger's experience this croaking or purring "song" is given practically 

 throughout the year, with a marked decline in late summer — late Jan- 

 uary to mid-April. In the summer of 1952 Ranger noted a great range 



