92 Mr. C. F. M. Swyunerton on the 



being replied to by its mate at some distance away^, and on one 

 occasion in tbe Chikamboge Valley I watched three birds all 

 calling to each other. The call is invariably accompanied by 

 a short circular flight of two or three feet in range either 

 from left to right or vice versa. This flight is usually little 

 above the horizontal (not^ as the Woodwards' account, vide 

 W. L. Sclater, Fauna of S. A., Birds, ii. p. 249, would seem 

 to imply, a vertical leap from the brancli), the bird returning 

 sometimes to the same twig, sometimes to another. When 

 about to fly to another tree, or to make one of its 

 call-flights, it first leans forward and pauses slightly or 

 sometimes faces right round, immediately before making the 

 flight. The birds call most in the morning and evening, 

 especially the latter, keeping comparatively' quiet during the 

 hotter hours. On the Kurumadzi in the evenings one might 

 hear their cries in every direction, not only in the denser 

 bush but from isolated trees standing in the grass-jungle, 

 and this would be kept up till dark. My friend Dr. Thomp- 

 son, who observed one of these Flycatchers on the Inyama- 

 kunga, a stream near Chikore, lately suggested to me that 

 the peculiar call was caused partly, if not wholly, by the 

 vibiation of the wings — so different, he observed, on thefC 

 occasions to the bird's ordinary steady flight. I had the 

 opportunity shortly afterwards of watching a pair in 

 flagrante delictu for a considerable time, the female par- 

 ticularly at very close (juarters (five or six yards). The 

 whirr of the wings could be heard every time quite separately, 

 the loud stridulating sound, which is all that one hears at a 

 little distance, being made by the vocal organs. Again, in 

 merely moving from branch to branch, the birds did occasion- 

 ally vibrate their wings in the manner of their circular flight, 

 this vibration, which is not particularly loud, being then heard 

 alone. Nine Broad-bills averaged 5"93 inches in length in 

 the fleshj ranging from 55 to 6"12. Feet dull olive-green, 

 sometimes greyish in tone, in others yellowish ; irides dark 

 brown ; bill — upper mandible black, lower pinkish white 

 veined with purple. 



Mr. G. A. K. Marshall informs me that the contents of 



