98 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



and then a scaly-throated honey-guide flew over him, and veered off 

 into the bush just before reaching the call site of the other bird. For 

 about 30 seconds there was silence and then a bird appeared from the 

 second call site and settled in a tree about 30 yards away. As the 

 intruder from the first call site sat there the bird from the second site 

 gave three bursts of the protest utterance, trrreeee-phew. Ranger's 

 experience has been that on the occasions when he has whistle-called 

 and two birds have been seen near each other at the call site this 

 "protest" call has resulted. When only one bird was found away 

 from a call site it responded with the whistle-call, not with the trill 

 of protest. This trill is high-pitched, quite rapid, and with a notice- 

 able inflection. 



Still more recently (October 1952) Ranger sent me some highly 

 interesting observations concerning one bird (presumably a male) 

 taking over the call site from its former occupant. Fortunately, the 

 two individuals were readily distinguished in the field, as one, the 

 original occupant and the defender of the site, was in the process of 

 molting its tail feathers and had an assymetrical, "untidy" tail, 

 while the newcomer had its complete complement of fully grown 

 rectrices. For the purposes of easy reference the former bird may 

 be caUed M (for molt), and the latter C (complete). 



At 11:05 a. m. on March 30, 1952, as Ranger walked up to the 

 immediate area of the chief call site of M, a variegated honey-guide 

 flew from a tree a few yards from the central calling trees, circled 

 about them, and lit on the favorite one. From here now came the 

 most urgent protest crying yet heard from this species — the protest 

 note made into a shriek. After a little while this calmed down to 

 the ordinary protest note (without the terminal pheeuw), and this, in 

 turn, was followed by the urgent crying of two birds and their chasing 

 flight around the site, and then by their perching near each other, 

 still excitedly giving the protest shrieks. This activity lasted 7 

 minutes in all, and ended with the birds alighting near and above 

 Ranger, perching about two feet apart on different levels. Here 

 they sat still and silently regarded each other in apparently tense, 

 alert fashion, only their heads moving at times in a very slow manner 

 to direct a stare at each other, one of the birds blinking frequently 

 with both its eyelids and its nictitating membrane. For 33 minutes 

 this silent sitting went on, and at 11:45 the birds suddenly darted off 

 in flight, in close chase. Owing to the fact that Ranger had his 

 glasses trained on only one of them at that instant, it could not be 

 determined whether M or C initiated this chasing flight. The two 

 birds settled again, M continued giving the protest notes for 5 minutes 

 while C remained silent; then a renewal of the chasing, and then C 

 gave the guttural, purring site call (i. e. the "song" given by an 



