350 Mr. Swj'nnei'ton on Mixed Bird-parlies. 



original Bulbul returning to their previous occupations. 

 On no fewer than seven separate occasions (including the 

 one already described) I saw an insect or other object of 

 interest to the birds fall to the ground in this way, having 

 been dislodged by one or other of the Barratt's Bulbuls. 

 On each occasion from one to three of the Bulbuls — occa- 

 sionally fairly widely separated birds — dashed after it, and 

 one or more, tveice with the unsolicited assistance of a 

 member or members of the P. capensis party, remained to 

 search for it on the ground. Once I saw a P. flavistriatus, 

 after rising from such a search, batter something against a 

 twig, but on the remaining occasions I was unable to see 

 whether the birds were successful or otherwise. I was 

 interested to see (1) that the Bristle-necked Bulbuls do not 

 render their services as beaters for nothing ; they evidently 

 attempt to annex some at least of the crumbs that fall from 

 above : and (2) that the trick of falling inertly to the 

 ground practised by so many beetles, spiders, etc., and 

 often so disconcerting to the naturalist, is not necessarily 

 final as against birds of the ' searching ' class. 



" Once a * Barratt ' flew across a small open space, drove 

 off a Trochocercus and took some small object from a leaf 

 just in front of it. Another time a bird of the same species 

 flushed and went after a small flying insect, but was at once 

 joined in the pursuit by its next door neighbours of two or 

 three feet away. One of them captured it in the air. 



'^ A female Batis erijthrophthalma remained more or less 

 in sight for about ten minutes ; I could hear anotlier singing 

 in the foliage some distance off. She, like the Drongo and. 

 the White-spotted Flycatchers, spent quite a good deal of 

 her time in watching the Bulbids, though out of two or 

 three objects seized by her in mid-air I am unal)le to say 

 that any came from these birds ; they were too small to 

 see at all. Four times I saw her fly up and pick some 

 insect from the underside of the leaves above her. 



" A party of three or four Apalis chirindensis, searching 

 closely high in the foliage, and a single Cinnyris oliva- 

 cinus, were the only other birds seen j but the forest 



