PARASITIC WEAVERBIRDS 147 



The behavior of paradise widow birds breeding in captivity is by 

 no means a rehable hidex of their normal habits, but it is known that 

 such birds have hiid eggs in nests of melba finches, fire finches, and 

 zebra finches, facts wdiich suggest that more than one kind of nest is 

 acceptable to a hen of the parasite. In the wihl, we have as yet no 

 indication either of host specificity or of its absence. 



The interval between eggs and their incubation period arc also 

 still to be discovered. 



A. R. Robertson (1949) reported that in captivity the paradise 

 widow birds breeding in Prinsloo's aviary (discussed below in our 

 account of the melba finch, Pytilia melba as a host) showed no attempt 

 to destroy the eggs of the hosts in whose nests they had been laid. 

 On the other hand, Lloyd (1955) felt that he had sufficient evidence 

 to the contrary to cause him to suspect the female paradise widow 

 bird of deliberate egg destruction. He reported that on one day a 

 fire finch's nest in his aviary contained four eggs of its own and two 

 of the paradise widow" bird, and that the next day three of the fire 

 finch's eggs were gone. The female paradise widow" bird Avas sus- 

 pected and was removed from this cage to a smaller solitary one. 

 Some weeks later, when the fire finches had nested again and had 

 several eggs in the nest, the hen paradise w^dow bird was brought 

 back into the cage and it laid another egg in the nest, "destroying a 

 Fire Finch's egg as before." The destruction of three eggs in one day 

 without any egg laying by the parasite points more to ordinary egg 

 robbing than to the usual parasitic "replacement" behavior. The 

 subsequent instance listed gives the impression of egg removal to 

 make room for a parasitic substitute. 



Although the paradise widow bird is wholly parasitic in its breeding, 

 there is an old avicultural observation that is difficult to fit in with 

 the more recently learned facts. A. G. Butler (1899, p. 273) cited 

 Russ, w"ho, after trjdng for yeors to breed this bird in captivit)'', had 

 one partial success, which he related as follows: 



I . . . turned loose three females with one male in the bird-room. During 

 the first 3'ear these did not exhibit the slightest inclination to nest. Only towards 

 the autumn of the second year all three began to drag straws hither and thither, 

 and in November, whilst the male was still exhibiting full ornamental plumage, 

 they collected bents, threads of bast, tufts of cotton-wool and the like, into an 

 apparently disordered heap on the wire bottom of a high hanging cage. I could, 

 however, never make sure of an approach between male and female. When, 

 after a considerable time, I at length investigated, I found an extraordinary 

 double nest within the large tower, of all possible materials. One nest cavity 

 was shaped like a baker's oven. . . . In the first were three, unfortunately dead, 

 young ones, in the second a living one. . . . The living j'oungster was fed by 

 two females, but I never noticed that the old male troubled himself about the 

 nest or the young one. The latter in its young clothing was very Uke the old 



