256 



111 conclusion I may state that these young were 

 reared by their parents entirely on dry seed and 

 groundsel. The seed consisted of canar}', millet, 

 white oats, wheat, and hemp, and the only green food 

 given was groundsel, but as the outer flight is large 

 and grass grown, the parent birds may have found 

 other food besides. 



®ii the IRcstino of sonic (Bainbian BirOs. 



By E. HOPKINSON, D.S.O., M.A., M.B. 



LAST year I gave in our Magazine some accounts 

 of the birds of this part of the world, and 

 now I will endeavour to supplement that 

 account by describing the nests of the com- 

 moner Waxbills, Weavers and Finches, which I have 

 come across since I wrote my first notes on the subject. 

 Those notes were indeed written before I had ever 

 been out here during the whole of the rains, (the 

 breeding season among our bird.s), so that I could 

 then give but few particulars about their nests and 

 eggs. 



The Firefinches (^Lagonoslicta senegala) nest in the 

 grass roofs of native huts and also in grass tufts on 

 the ground. During the dr}' season they hardly ever 

 leave the villages, where they live on the waste corn 

 in the yards and on various grass-seeds, flying in and 

 out of the houses regardless of their other occupants, 

 and roosting at night in their old nests in the thatch. 

 During the rains, the breeding season, they however 

 seem to split up into two parties, one of which 

 remains about the village and nests in holes in the 

 thatch, adding a lining of long soft grass and a few 

 feathers, or else building roughly spherical nests 

 between the cane rafters and the thatch which they 

 support, while the other party retires to breed in the 

 scrub outside the village, (though they never go far 



