Birds of Southern Kameriin. 43 



[Two eggs arc of a rather pointed oval shape and pure 

 white.— O.-G.] 



1335. Ploceus dorso-maculatus, 



Phormopledes dorsomaculatus Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 349. 



The specimens of this bird were all obtained recently 

 around Bitye, killed by my boys. They seem to have 

 been found in such places as the last species {Ploceus 

 bicolor), and to eat the same sort of food, mostly insects. 

 No. 2438 was killed along with its young. No. 2439, in a 

 curious manner. The boy caught the young one first and 

 tied a string to its foot, and held it thus tethered while he 

 hid himself and waited. The old bird (the father, not the 

 mother) came " with a fruit iu its mouth " to give the 

 young one, when the boy killed it with a stick. The 

 "fruit" was probably a spider, a leg of which I found iu 

 the bird^s mouth. 



1346. Ploceus nigricollis. [Ngas.] 

 Heteryphantes nigricollis Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 348. 

 This is one of the commonest birds in clearings and in small 

 second-growth bushes in every place where I have collected. 

 But though common it is rather silent ond retiring. In my 

 note which was published in * The Ibis ' (1908, p. 349), but 

 was written two or three years ago, in saying that it " makes 

 a great rustling of leaves," I had confused Ploceus bicolor 

 with this bird. Then I had likewise not learned to dis- 

 tinguish the nests of the two species, and the words " with 

 a very short entrance and somewhat roughly made " apply 

 better to nests of Sycohrotus bicolor. The nests of the 

 '* Ngas " are somewhat smaller, have the entrance or vesti- 

 bule a little longer, and are a little better woven and of finer 

 materials — fine w^eed or grass-stems, although in general the 

 nests of the two species look alike. " Ngas's " nests are 

 found very often — generally old and deserted ones — hanging 

 on bushes, not on trees. Other smaller birds, or at least the 

 little Flycatcher Poedilorhynchus carnerunensis , use these 

 second-hand nests to breed in, so that eggs found in a 

 Ngas's nest are not always eggs of the Ngas. 



