the honey-guides 213 



Food and Feeding Habits 



Stomach contents of many adult lesser honey-guides collected by 

 numerous observers reveal quantities of beeswax, insect remains, and 

 often a sticky mass of what probably is honey. Following are a few 

 sample statements from the literature. 



Chapin (1939, pp. 541-543) writes that a male from Beni, eastern 

 Congo (subspecies riggenbachi) had its stomach filled with bits of 

 beeswax mingled with fragments of chitinous insect parts, probably 

 not from bees. Of /. minor conirostris he notes (ibid, pp. 544-545) 

 that the food remains in two examples taken at Lukolela contained 

 beeswax and bits of unidentified insect remains. Farther to the 

 northwest. Bates (1934, p. 237) records only wax in the gizzard of a 

 specimen of /. minor senegalensis from near Mopti, French Sudan. 

 Gurney (1860, p. 205) reports that a bird from Natal (/. minor minor) 

 had its gizzard fuU of caterpillars, an observation that is unique as far 

 as I know\ 



Bates (in Bannerman, 1933, pp. 413-^15) found wax and pollen and 

 bits of insects, bees (?) or ants (?), in the gizzards of specimens of /. 

 minor conirostris in the Cameroons. He first met with the species in 

 a plantation clearing in the forest at Efulen, where the birds had 

 gathered to feed on bits of bee comb that had been scattered on the 

 ground by the falling of a tree. His native assistants set snares over 

 the pieces of comb and caught several of the honey-guides in this way. 

 In Spanish Guinea, Sabater (in litt. to J. P. Chapin) also trapped two 

 of the birds in a snare baited with bee comb. Of the subspecies /. 

 minor pallidus in Nigeria, Marchant (1950, p. 25) states that the 

 stomach contents of three specimens "were a sticky compact yellow 

 mass probably of bees' wax, in one case with hymenopteran remains." 

 He records (1951, p. 73) /. minor conirostris feeding on "what looked 

 like small bees or 'sweat flies' " at Owerri, Nigeria. In Kenya Colony, 

 Williams writes me that all the stomachs of a considerable number of 

 specimens collected have held beeswax, white or yellowish in color, 

 mixed with varying amounts of blackish insect particles. The gizzard 

 of one bird (7. m. minor) collected in Nyasaland by Benson (1942, 

 p. 300) contained smaU ants. 



I have often watched lesser honey-guides feeding like flycatchers in 

 midair over a woodland pool in the Umtaleni VaUey in eastern Cape 

 Province. Ranger's long experience with the birds in this area leads 

 him to think the species gets a good percentage of its food in this way, 

 hawking after May flies and other insects that are common over water. 

 The birds seemed to do their feeding chiefly early in the morning, i. e., 

 for the first hour or more after sunrise, and again in the late afternoon 

 for the two hours before dark. Even during the middle of the day, a 



