PARASITIC WEAVERBIRDS 155 



appears that the young parasites upon leaving their foster parents 

 join with adults of their own Idnd, and v.ith them join with other un- 

 related species. There is no reason for assuming that these young 

 birds seen by Hoesch and Niethammer were associated with their 

 nest mates or their foster parents. 



Lloyd (1955) wrote that a newly fledged paradise widow bird reared 

 by a pair of fire finches in his aviary readily found its way around 

 the cage, but often liked to sit just inside a coconut shell placed there 

 as a possible nesting site for the birds, and from this perch it watched 

 everything about it. After it had been out of the nest two weeks its 

 foster parents began to nest again. "Although by then the baby 

 Whydah w^as feeding himself, the cock Fire Finch stayed with him 

 c^uite a lot and still occasionally fed him." 



Food and Feeding Habits 



The gizzards of specimens examined in Southern Rhodesia contained 

 only small seeds, probably of grasses. Chapin recorded similar find- 

 ings in birds shot in the Belgian Congo, and others also commented 

 on the almost exclusive seed diet of the paradise widow bird. Chubb 

 (1909, p. 166) wrote, how^ever, that in Southern Rhodesia Mennell 

 saw several individuals eating flying termites as the insects swarmed 

 from a hole in the gi^ound. 



I also note Freyberg's (1879) report that a captive paradise widow 

 bird once coughed up w^hat he identified as a portion of its stomach 

 lining. This occurrence has since never again been reported to my 

 knowledge, and it would be strange indeed if this bird actually coughed 

 up a part of the lining of its alimentary canal. Such a habit is known 

 in hornbills but not in passerine birds. 



Plumages and Molts 



Lynes (1924, p. 678) and others suggested that the paradise widow 

 bird, like the species of Vidua, does not acquire full}'- adult plumage in 

 the first 3'ear, and does not breed until at least the second year. As 

 far as the study of specimens is concerned, there is no discernible 

 subadult plumage, even though there may be one in reality that is 

 identical in appearance with the juvenal one, or with the nonbreeding 

 plumage of male birds. The question is one that cannot be solved 

 with museum specimens, but must be w^orked out in the field or in the 

 aviary with marked, living birds. Until such information is available, 

 I can only describe a juvenal and an adult plumage (in the males two 

 seasonal adult plumages). 



Brown and Rollo (1940) studied the effect of light on the molt in 

 weaverbirds, and, among other examples, used two paradise widow^ 



