168 bulletin- 208, united states national museum 



Miscellaneous 



Fights with other birds: Heuglin (1869, pp. 767-769) once wit- 

 nessed an apparently spirited battle between a female greater honey- 

 guide and a coucal (Centropus sp.). The latter bird was victorious 

 and drove away the much smaller Indicator. The cause or nature 

 of the fight is not described. Recently Skead (1951, p. 58) saw an 

 attack on one of these honey-guides by a brown-hooded king-fisher 

 (Halcyon albiventris) when the former came into his garden. A pair 

 of the kingfishers were frequently in and about the garden, but were 

 never seen to attack any of the many other birds there. "Their 

 nesting and sleeping hole was tunneled into an earth bank 150 yards 

 from the garden and their action towards the honeyguide made me 

 wonder whether they had recognized it as an enemy in the way 

 barbets recognize Lesser Honeyguides and weaver-birds recognize 

 cuckoos. The Kingfishers were not nesting at the time." Yet, 

 when a greater honey-guide came into the garden it was promptly 

 and determinedly attacked. 



On one occasion Skead saw a larger double-collared sunbird, 

 Oinnyris afer, mobbing an adult male greater honey-guide that sat 

 calmly on a twig projecting above the forest canopy, its head drawn 

 down into its hunched-up shoulders, and apparently not unduly 

 disturbed by the excited chattering and fluttering about of the 

 sunbird. On another occasion, near Howick, Natal, early in October, 

 I saw three scimitar-billed wood-hoopoes (Rhinopomastus cyanomelas) 

 noisily pursuing a greater honey-guide until all were out of sight. 



It is difficult to account for the fact that while many more observers 

 have seen this honey-guide than the lesser one, I. minor, the former 

 species relatively rarely has been reported as being attacked by other 

 birds while there are many such instances recorded for the latter 

 species. Similarly, /. minor has been observed by numerous natural- 

 ists coming to the nest-holes of barbets and other birds and being 

 driven off repeatedly by them, while remarkably few such data are at 

 hand for /. indicator. Likewise, whereas /. minor frequently attacks 

 and drives away other birds, including some larger than itself, /. 

 indicator is not known to do so. 



It is well known from many observations of numerous writers that 

 small birds frequently "mob" parasitic cuckoos of various kinds if 

 the latter come near their nests. In the case of certain species of 

 cuckoos, it has been assumed in the literature that this may be due 

 to the hawklike appearance of the intruders, but this possible factor 

 cannot be assumed in the case of the honey-guides. There are, in 

 fact, no data that suggest that this parasite is recognized as a specifi- 

 cally identified "enemy." In the lack of frequent or regular fighting 



