154 BULLETIN 2 08, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



What seems to be one of the earliest recorded instances of the yellow- 

 throated sparrow as a host of the honey-guide is given by Lydekker 

 (1916, p. 150), who mentions a young honey-guide (of uncertain 

 species, however) taken from a nest of this sparrow. 



Passer griseus gongonensis (Oustalet). Parrot-billed gray-headed sparrow. 



Pseudoslndhus gongonensis Oustalet, Le Naturaliste, ser. 2, vol. 4, No. 90, 

 p. 224, 1890. (Gongoni, near Mombasa.) 



A single record has come to my attention. It was kindly sent to 

 me by Sir Charles F. Belcher. On July 19, 1944, at Muthaiga, a 

 suburb of Nairobi, he was shown a fledgling greater honey-guide 

 that had been placed in a wooden box on a veranda where it could be 

 fed by its foster parents. He saw the latter, a pair of paiTot-billed 

 sparrows, come and feed the young Indicator. On making inquiries 

 about the nest from which it had been taken, he was shown a nest of 

 a mosque swallow with a tubular entrance under the eaves at the back 

 of the 2-story house of the friend who had asked him to see the 

 bird. Sir Charles broke off the tubular entrance and found that the 

 nest had been relined with grass by the sparrows; it contained one 

 egg of the host, quite dried, but showing a peck hole similar to those 

 in eggs in nests of other victims of the greater honey-guide. 



Questionable Host Records 



Aside from the species known with greater or less evidence as hosts 

 of this honey-guide, a number of other birds have been mentioned 

 in the literature as victims of its parasitic habits. None of these are 

 substantiated by any preserved or recorded evidence and all seem 

 unlikely. However, our knowledge is not yet on such firm foundation 

 as to enable us to rule out these cases merely because they seem un- 

 likely. They are therefore given below with the necessary qualifying 

 remarks. 



The earliest mention of the fact that the honey-guides are parasitic 

 in their breeding habits is that given by Hartlaub (1854, p. 417) on 

 the basis of observations communicated to him by the Verreaux 

 brothers. They recorded finding eggs or young of the greater honey- 

 guide (listed by them as three distinct species on the basis of the 

 Juvenal, adult male, and adult female plumages) in nests of two 

 species of woodpeckers (Campethera nubica and Dendropicos fusces- 

 cens),^^ an oriole {Oriolus monachus larvatus), two bulbuls (Pycnonotus 

 cnpenM'i and Andropadus importunus) and two shrikes (Laniarius 

 ferrugifieus and Dryoscopus cuhla). While the two woodpeckers may 

 be correct, I doubt Yerj much that the open-nesting birds — such as the 



** Benson (1953, p. 45) lists Dendropicos fuscescens as a host in Nj-asaland but 

 leaves the record open to doubt as to identification 



