THE HONEY-GUIDES 169 



with its host species, the greater honey-guide resembles the American 

 parasitic cowbirds to some extent; this cannot be said for the lesser 

 honey-guide, however. In the present species some comparable 

 hostility has been noted towards the newly fledged young rather than 

 towards its parents. It may be recalled, in the discussion of the 

 postnestling stage, how a yellow-throated sparrow, presumably the 

 male of a pair of foster parents, reacted with hostility to the young 

 Indicator indicator after it left the nest as long as it remained in the 

 near vicinity. In Nyasaland, Wood has witnessed a similar fledgling 

 greater honey-guide being mobbed by a number of birds — bulbuls 

 (Pycnonotus and Chlorocichla) , puff-backed shril^:es (Dryoscopus cubla), 

 and weavers {Uraeginthus and Amadina). The noteworthy point 

 about these birds is that none of them is victimized by the honey- 

 guide, a fact that makes it difficult to interpret the situation. This 

 observation is the only one of its kind that has come to my attention, 

 and I venture to suggest that the "mobbmg" may have been begun 

 by some species of fosterer, and that the other participants became 

 excited by the action, joined in, and "took over" by the time the 

 observer made his notes. 



Flocking: The greater honey-guide is usually found singlj'-, and 

 prolonged observation of individual birds bears out their essentially 

 solitary mode of living. Occasionally several are found together, 

 especially when attracted to an opened bees' nest. Swynnerton 

 (1908, p. 412) records seeing four of the birds at such a spot in Gaza- 

 land, and Chapin writes that a party of four is the largest number 

 he had seen in the Belgian Congo. At Maktau, Kenya Colony, in 

 May, I saw a loose flock of about seven or eight immature birds, in 

 the yellow-throated plumage, in attendance on a few oryx antelopes, 

 apparently catching insects scared up by the grazing beasts. Capt. 

 Pitman writes me that he has also seen parties of up to half a dozen 

 yellow-throated birds, never adults or mixed parties, and Serle (1939, 

 p. 698) observed a similar group of young birds at Kafanchan, 

 northern Nigeria. 



Paeasites: No species of Mallojphaga have been described or 

 recorded in print from any honey-guide, but Miss Theresa Clay 

 informs me that in the collections of the British Museum there is a 

 specimen of an undescribed species of the genus Penenirmus from 

 Indicator indicator. The bird lice of the genus Penenirmus were 

 previously known from Passeres, Picidae, and Capitonidae. Miss 

 Clay states that the one taken from a greater honey-guide super- 

 ficially resembles more some that are known from woodpeckers than 

 it does those from barbets. 



Thanks to the kind cooperation of Dr. W. Biittiker, formerly of 

 Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and of Dr. Joel Warren and Maj. 



