36 Mr. G. L. Bates— Field-Notes on the 



trees, in exactly the same manner as the species I had collected 

 at Efulen, and uttering the same calls. 



1203. Lanius mackinnoni. [Asanze, or Asese.] 

 Fiscus mackinnoni Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 328. 

 I have a little to add to my note in ' The Ibis ' about this 

 bird. Once in a cassava-patch, on a thorn-like twig of some 

 dead bush, I found a partly eaten body of a young bird 

 impaled. That I lay this crime at the door of the Asanze 

 is only because I know that its relatives in other lands are 

 " butcher-birds.'' But against the evil which I only suspect, 

 I hasten to tell the good that I know of this bird. For, though 

 usually silent and morose, when the right mood comes it is 

 a sweet singer. Its notes are slow and scattering, but varied 

 and sweet, and it introduces clever imitations of other birds. 

 I have thus noted hearing the querulous cry of the Coly 

 and the call of Pycnonotus gahonensis mimicked perfectly by 

 this Shrike. Once, while an Asanze was watched singing, its 

 mate was seen to come and perch close beside it, while the 

 singer continued his song. 



1235. DicRURUs ATRiPENNis. [Eboudi, or Fa-Beti.] 



Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 354. 



This is the common forest-Drongo in all localities. In my 

 account of the ejah, or company of little birds wandering 

 and feeding together in the forest (' The Ibis,' 1905, p. 462), 

 1 named this as nearly always the most conspicuous bird of 

 the pjak. On reading, in Mr. Swynnerton's first paper on 

 the Birds of Gazaland, of *' the habit of this species [Dicrurus 

 aftr] of assuming the leadership of the flocks of small birds 

 so often met with " (' The Ibis,' 1907, p. 72), it struck me that 

 my " ejak " was something similar to what was mentioned 

 there. It never occurred to me that the Dicrurus here in 

 Kamerun was the leader of the ejak in any other sense than 

 being the noisiest bird in it, the continual calling of which 

 served to keep the company together, just as the gruff 

 barking of a " father " monkey keeps a troop of monkeys 

 together among the tree-tops. 



