THE HONEY-GUIDES 155 



orioles, bulbuls, and shrikes — can be looked upon as validly identi- 

 fied hosts. Aside from the great improbability that the Verreaux 

 brothers should have had so many observations at variance with the 

 experience of all subsequent observers, their other notes (as recorded 

 by Hartlaub) on the habits of the honey-guides are obviously errone- 

 ous. I can only hazard a possible guess that in the case of the bulbuls 

 and shrikes the supposed Indicator eggs may have been eggs of the 

 southern Jacobin cuckoo, Clamator jacobinus serrator. A further 

 doubtful statement is recorded by Finsch and Hartlaub (1870, p. 347) 

 to the effect that they had a note in Verreaux's handwriting stating 

 that he found a nest of Dryoscopus cuhla containing two young shrikes 

 and one young I. major (= I. indicator) which had gi'own up together! 

 The Verreaux brothers' observations have been quoted not only by 

 Finsch and Hartlaub but also by Des Murs (in Lefebvre, 1850); 

 fortunately they have been ignored by recent writers. 



A South African drongo, Dicrurus adsimilis adsimiliSy figures in 

 the literature as a host of the greater honey-guide but the evidence 

 is based on a single record which seems to me without value. Ivy 

 (1901, p. 21), at Blue Krantz, South Africa, saw a greater honey-guide 

 pursued by two drongos whose nest was on the top of a tall euphorbia. 

 He writes that he "could distinctly make out the transparent egg of 

 the Honey-guide along with the more opaque-white eggs of the Drongo, 

 of which there were 3." This record is accepted by Roberts (1939, 

 pp. 100-102); and Priest (1948, pp. 63-64) writes that drongos are 

 suspected of being hosts of this honey-guide. Gill (1945, p. 91) also 

 lists "the drongo" as a victim, as does the author of the Albany 

 Museum's "Guide to the Vertebrate Fauna of the Eastern Cape 

 Province" (1931, p. 159). Aside from the fact that honey-guide eggs 

 are not "transparent," there is no indication that Ivy even climbed 

 up to and examined the nest and its contents. The mere fact that the 

 drongos were chasing a honey-guide is no evidence that the latter 

 had laid an egg in their nest. It would seem that this record is one that 

 had better be deleted as having no established basis. 



To these may be added some very inconclusive notes on two other 

 birds not otherwise known to be affected by the honey-guides — the 

 fiscal flycatcher, Sigelus silens, and the scarlet-breasted sunbird, 

 Chalcomitra senegalensis. Of the former, H. A. W. Bladen, of Cradock, 

 Cape Province, writes me that once in 1939 he saw a fledged young 

 honey-guide together with a pair of fiscal flycatchers. He was able 

 to observe it closely at very close range (about 8 feet), but did not see 

 it actually either beg for food from the flycatchers or receive any atten- 

 tion from them, although he had the birds under observation for a 

 number of minutes. He felt that the birds were definitely associated 

 and were not in the tree merely by coincidence. Of the sunbird. 



