THE HONEY-GUIDES 247 



with olive-yellow; middle pair of rectrices dark brown with faint 

 olive-yellow margins, remaining rectrices white tipped with light 

 brown, which color extends all the way along the margin of the outer 

 webs; entire underparts pale grayish brown strongly washed with 

 yellow; under wing-coverts pale brownish; iris brown, bill blackish,^" 

 feet dull greenish yellow. Measurements in millimeters: male: wing 

 79-83, tail 48-52, culmen 9-10, tarsus 16; female: wing 73-76, tail 

 46-49, culmen 9, tarsus 10-13. Two males and three females were 

 measured. (Bannerman, 1933, p. 418.) 

 Other plumages are unknown. 



Genus Prodotiscus Sundevall 



Prodotiscus Sundevall, Ofv. Vet. Svenska-Akad. Forh., vol. 7, p. 109, 1850. 



(Type, by monotypy, Prodotiscus regulus Sundevall.) 

 Hetaerodes Cassin, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, vol. 8, p. 157, 1856. 



(Type, by monotypy, Hetaerodes insignis Cassin.) 



The most divergent of all the honey-guides ; small in size, with only 

 10 tail feathers, the outermost pair somewhat shorter than the others, 

 the plumage generally looser and fluffier than in Indicator, and the 

 bill small and slender, the skin thinner (not noticeably thick as in the 

 genus Indicator), the sternum with a much deeper keel than in any 

 of the other genera (which are generally of a dorsoventrally depressed 

 body form). The birds of this genus, unlike all their relatives, do not 

 feed regularly on bee comb and its inclusions but are insect-catchers, 

 feeding largely on scale insects. Furthermore, they differ markedly 

 from the other honey-guides in that they often lay their eggs in the 

 open, cuplike nests of such birds as warblers (Apalis), white-eyes 

 (Zosterops), and flycatchers (Platysteira) . These hosts are known 

 as yet for only one species, P. insignis; the meager evidence for the 

 other, P. regulus, suggests a hole-nesting host, Petronia superciliaris. 



Two species; one (insignis) in the forests from Upper Guinea to 

 southern Ethiopia, south to Southern Rhodesia; the other (regulus) 

 in the dense bushveld from Cameroons to Ethiopia, south to Natal 

 and the eastern Cape Province. The forest species (insignis) is olive 

 green in color, the bird of the more open country (regulus) is dull 

 brown. According to Benson (1953, p. 45), in Nyasaland the two 

 species overlap ecologically, both being found in Brachystegia wood- 

 lands. 



" Bates (1911, p. 504) writes that two birds from the Cameroons had the bill dark 

 horny, yellowish at the base of the mandible and at the gape; the nostrils with a 

 long, elliptical raised rim. 

 309265—55 18 



