Birds of the Buffalo Basin 47 



at the old stance and continues for another twenty minutes before 

 going to roost. Should a storm of rain come on in the late after- 

 noon, he will make for his singing-quarters and sing his loudest 

 during the storm, and later strike up again at his normal time. 

 During the mid-winter months he often settles down in a bush 

 in the heat of the day and croons away in pleasing strains to 

 himself. The Glossy Starling nests in holes of trees or of build- 

 ings, and shows great pertinacity in clinging to a chosen nesting 

 haunt. Mr. Fred Madlingozi tells me that at one particular 

 hole five of these birds were caught in succession, but that tht 

 hole was not deserted by the species till the tree was cut down 

 by the owner of the field. On 17th December, 1909, a bird 

 with five incubated eggs was brought to me from a hole in a 

 tree at Pirie. The eggs, measuring 28-30 x 20-21 mm., are 

 bluish-green in ground colour, sparingly spotted and dotted with 

 brown and violet. Two brood are reared in a season. 



Red- winged Starding — Am^drus morio (L.) : This is the most 

 abundant and best-known of our local starlings. Originally a 

 bird of the cliffs, it still frequents such situations both along 

 shore and inland, and in such places its pleasing musical call, 

 re-echoing from the rocks, has, especially at sunset, a bewitching 

 charm. Like several other cliff-birds, however, this starling takes 

 readily to buildings, and, from its pertinacity in clinging to its 

 chosen haunt, it becomes at times an actual nuisance. Through 

 broken panes or ventilators they gain access to unoccupied build- 

 ings; occasionally one fails to re-discover the place of ingress 

 and dies of starvation in its prison. A pair cling to the Pirie 

 church, and often, when the church is lit up at night, one or 

 both flutter about the building m wild alarm, but they do not 

 for this occasional inconvenience desert their home. In November, 

 1908, they actually built on an open buttress inside the building- 

 I had no intention of allowing them to settle there, and on the 

 1 0th I removed the still unfinished structure; it was a huge mass 

 of mud with rough plant stems and measured in its foundation 

 eleven inches by eight. For a time I thought the birds, having been 

 thus foiled, had given up their intention of nesting in the church, 

 but, on the 16th February following I reard the ominous squeal- 



