THE HONEY-GUIDES 175 



be overlooked to some degree, and may not be quite as rare as the pau- 

 city of records would indicate. Recently, Hoogerwerf (Chasen and 

 Hoogerwerf, 1941, p. 42) obtained a specimen from a low shrub in 

 pasture land near Lesten, northern Sumatra. This suggests a wider 

 habitat range than a purely sylvan one, and this, in turn, together 

 with the fact that there is a Malay name for it, "musoh lebah," at 

 least suggests that the bird may be common enough to be known to 

 some of the people (if the name is really restricted to the one kind of 

 bird, and not a general name for any smallish species). 



Harrisson informs me that on April 1, 1953, he saw a honey -guide on 

 Satang Island, which is about 10 miles off the mouth of the Sarawak 

 River. The point of this record is that he doubts that the bird is 

 strictly resident on a small island, and suggests that the species may 

 be something of a wanderer. Satang Island has a very limited bird 

 fauna. 



The only indication of o breeding date is that suggested by an adult 

 male with considerably enlarged gonads that was taken at Paun, 

 southwestern Sarawak, February 14, 1950. There is no reason to 

 think that this honey-guide is other than resident wherever found, 

 but it is not impossible that it may be subject to slight movements 

 due to seasonal factors such as the flowering of the Dvpterocarpus trees, 

 and the resulting influence on the abundance and activity of wild 

 bees. We have, however, no information 



Association with Bees 



Guiding is not known to occur, but so verj'- few people have ever 

 even seen this species alive that this does not necessarily mean any- 

 thing. Chasen (1939, p. 166) admits complete lack of knowledge, but 

 notes that in Malaya the bird has been met with only at places and 

 times at which bees were unusually numerous. Two specimens were 

 shot from trees "near water when toll Dipterocarpus trees in flower were 

 attracting swarms of bees." Of two other examples from the Malay 

 Peninsula, Robinson and Kloss (1911, pp. 44-45) note that one was 

 shot in the vicinity of a bees' nest and both were taken in deep forest 

 by native assistants. One collected in Sumatra by Jacobson (in 

 Robinson, 1928, p. 97) was perched in a very high tree. Lowe (1933, 

 pp. 476-477) writes of it in Siam that it is a very retiring bird, easily 

 overlooked among the dense foliage of the trees. There appear to be 

 no recorded native legends about this bird that connect it with bees' 

 nests or with any guiding behavior. In Borneo, according to Hose 

 (1912, p. 154) the natives get honey and beeswax from the wild bees' 

 nests which are suspended from high branches of the trees; sometimes 

 there are many nests in one tree. The taking of the contents of these 



