THE HONEY-GUIDES 157 



fied, 75 yards from the nest whenever a foster-parent approaches with 

 food. This happens during the later days in the nest." 



Ejection of Nest Mates 



That the nestling greater honey-guide ejects the other young or eggs 

 in the nest is recorded by many statements in the literature, but in 

 every one of these cases the authors were either assuming that this 

 had happened because the young parasite was the sole occupant of the 

 nest or were merely repeating what had been said by earlier writers 

 on equally inferential grounds. The danger of making such an 

 assumption is obvious when we realize that the young Indicator may 

 only starve out any competitors in the nest, and that their dead bodies 

 may be removed later by the parent birds as part of normal nest 

 sanitation. However, it is now possible to state positively that 

 ejection by the young parasite does take place, although how fre- 

 quently or even how regularly this may transpire is unknown as yet. 



The one case in which ejection has been proved is in the following 

 account, kindly supplied me by its observer, B. M. Neuby-Varty. In 

 early October 1945, at Umvukwe Ranch, Banket, Southern Rhodesia, 

 Neuby-Varty found a nest of the crested barbet, Trachyphonus 

 vaillantii vailantii, containing three eggs of its own and one of the 

 greater honey-guide. The nest cavity was in a hole about 4 feet from 

 the top of a stump of a branch sticking out of a tree about 8 feet from 

 the ground. The top of this stump broke off at the entrance to the 

 nest exposing the eggs, all of which were hard set and which therefore 

 were not collected (fortunately). Four days later Neuby-Varty 

 inspected the nest again and found that all the eggs had hatched a 

 day or two before; on revisiting the nest four days later again he found 

 that the young honey-guide was the sole occupant of the nest while 

 the three young barbets, alive and unharmed, were on the ground 

 below. He picked them up, found no bruises or scratches on them, 

 and replaced them in the nest and stayed up in the tree to see what 

 might take place. Nothing happened for about half an hour, and he 

 climbed down again, but was not on the ground more than a few 

 minutes when one of the young barbets was pushed over the rim of the 

 nest and fell down to the earth. About five minutes later the second 

 young barbet was similarly ousted, and five minutes later again the 

 third one was ejected. From his position on the ground he could not 

 see exactly how the young honey-guide did it, but he told me that he 

 could see what might have been either the mandibular hooks or the 

 claws of the young parasite grasping the rim of the nest when ejecting 

 the barbets. (I doubt if the small and translucent mandibular hooks 

 could be seen at a distance of even a few feet ; furthermore, there is no 

 real certainty that the claws, if claws they were, were those of the 



