Whydahs. 213 



tlirow no li-lit on this point, (see B.X. 1909. 257 & A.M. 1910. 

 254). Until quite recently it a()pears to have been generally 

 held that in this respect the l^in-tailed Whydah was normally 

 behaved. The nest is described by a South African writer as a 

 somewhat openly woven domed nest of tine grass suspended 

 between the stems of a thick grass tuft a few inches off the 

 ground, the ends of the growing grass being tied together over 

 the nest to conceal it. This writer (Ayres) did not know the 

 eggs, as the only nest he had seen (he says) contained young 

 birds. Shelley, however, from whom the above is taken, in the 

 following paragraph describes the eggs (without any note of 

 doubt, as Butler remarks) as glossy greyish white with under- 

 lying violet marks and clear black or dark brown elongated 

 surface-marks evenly distributed. 



In igo6 or 1907, however, another South African writer, 

 (Austin Roberts, in the Journal of the S.A. Ornith. Union) 

 stated that he had found this bird to be parasitic in its breeding 

 habits. At first he thought that its victim was another Whydah, 

 the Red-collared, but later decided that the eggs were laid in 

 Waxbills' nests (E. astrilda). Butler considers these notes o! 

 Mr. Roberts' " far from conclusive," but on the other hand the 

 Editor of the Ibis in a notice of one of Mr. Roberts' papers 

 says (1914. p. 528), " we can see no valid reason for doubting 

 his words." There the matter stands for further investigation 

 and evidence. Unless one can believe that the bird is sometimes 

 a parasite and sometimes not, it is clear that there must have 

 been a mistake somewhere. Personally although I know the 

 bird well in W'est Africa, I have no knowledge whatever of its 

 nest or breeding habits, but from my general experience of how 

 easily one can be mistaken on such matters, I should be all in 

 favour of going by the more recent observations. The original 

 description, it must be remembered, was that of a single nest, — 

 the only one the describer had seen, — while the observations of 

 Roberts appear to ha\e been numerous and spread over some 

 years, and to have therefore much more certainly excluded the 

 chances of error than one single que could do. How easily 

 mistakes can and have been made, when opportunity for fre- 

 quent investigation is wanting, can be seen from the paragraph 

 with which Stark closes his account of this very bird: " A nest 



