96 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 223 



The distance of the hen from the ground appeared to be less unpor- 

 tant than the distance of the male above her. On several other 

 occasions I watched males com-ting where there were several brownish 

 hen-feathered birds present. I noticed frequently that the male 

 (only one in each group) tended to confine his attentions to one 

 particular bird. Apparently there was only one adult female, and 

 the other hen-feathered birds were year old individuals of either sex. 

 Once I shot the whole band (five brownish bhds) and found that 

 one was a female with an enlarged ovary, and that the rest were in non- 

 breeding condition. Three of them were males, and the other was 

 too badly damaged for its sex to be determined with certainty. 



Several variations of the courtship flight were reported. Granvik 

 (1923, pp. 183-184) wrote: "When the male saw that he was observed 

 he would fly a little distance off and drop to the ground, where he 

 executed and continued the dance in about the same manner as 

 Drepanoplectes jacksoni, that is to say, he would rise about a meter 

 into the air, then fall to the ground. Without stopping he kept up 

 in this way for a long while." Hamling (1944, p. 42) recorded another 

 variation in Southern Rhodesia. A male bird ''was perched on a 

 leafless branch, when a hen flew up and joined him; the cock promptly 

 flew off and gave the ordinary dancing performance. Then bobbing 

 back he made as if to alight on the branch again, but instead of 

 doing so he held himself suspended in the air a few inches from the 

 hen, moving neither up nor down, and maintained this position for 

 some moments; in fact by rapid wing beats he held himself almost 

 upright and completely stationary in the air." 



CoUias (in litt.) noted a very similar performance near Tshibati in 

 eastern Belgian Congo. The male hovered a few inches over the 

 female and held his body almost vertically while jerking his long 

 rectrices up and down in a vertical arc of 30 to 40 degrees and waving 

 them slightly laterally. The hen responded by crouching forward 

 with raised shoulders and tail and quivering wings. This was ap- 

 parently the position of invitation, but the male continued displaying 

 and made no attempt at coition. 



The display dance flight is obviously correlated with the long 

 central rectrices of the nuptial plumage, but the bu'ds do not alwa3's 

 wait until the prenuptial molt is complete. Thus, Moreau (in Sclater 

 and Moreau, 1933, p. 417) noted birds in winter plumage on July 31 

 in Tanganyiki fluttering over each other in the same way that the 

 long-tailed males do. One of them was collected and proved to be a 

 male with well developed testes. 



Other writers have also made similar observations. In Mozam- 

 bique, J. Vincent (1936, pp. 113-114) noted a male still in immatm'e 

 or nonbreeding plumage courting and giving the full song of the 



