All rights reserved. January, 1916, 



BIRD NOTES: 



THE 



JOURNAL OF THE FOREIGN BIRD CLUB 



The Nesting of Half- Masked Golden and Spot- 

 Winged Weavers. — Three Failures. 



I5y \V. Shore Daily. 



I have written ''B.X." so many times this season about 

 the happenings in my a\iaries, that it is with some diffi- 

 dence that I venture to seiid this record of three failures to 

 raise youtig amongst my collection of Weavers. The first 

 failure might, with a little more luck, have ended in success. 

 This was witli my pair of Half-masked Weavers {Hyphaii- 

 lorui:, vitclliinis). The male of this \ariety is one of the 

 most pleasingly coloured of the Hyphantliorniiic group. The 

 general body colour of the male is greenish-yellow, a narrow 

 band on forehead, and the throat black, crown of head rich 

 chestnut, also a considerabk^ patch of the same colour borders 

 the black patch on throat. The hen is greenish-yellow, and is 

 hard to distinguish from some of the other females of this 

 group. 



On the I oth of April, I turned this pair of birds, 

 into a roomy out-door aviary with a pair of Golden Weavers 

 iSiiogra galbuln), a pair of Red-collared Whydahs, some 

 cock Crimson-Crowned Weavers, and a few other birds. The 

 cock was in full breeding plumage at the time, which the 

 other males were not, and he easily dominated them for the 

 first month or so, but had to take a back seat later, when 

 the larger birds came into colour. 



The first week in June, I noticed the hen insjiccting 

 one of the nests, of which, by this time he had woven several. 

 Her choice was a particularly well woven one and suspended 

 from the branch of a spruce-tree. She made no attempt 

 at lining it, and on June loth, her first egg was laid, fol- 



