BISHOP AND WIDOW-BIRDS 119 



brilliant plumage of orange-scarlet and black to need any 

 description. Length, 6 inches. It is a common resident 

 from Cape Province northwards. It is particularly common 



in the Maroka district of the Orange Free State and 



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the Central Transvaal, where the writer has had personal 

 experience of its depredatory habits. In the first- 

 mentioned country it is so destructive to the Kaffir corn and 



Fig/65.— The home of the Red Bishop-Bird. (Photo. Haagner.) 



wheat crops that it has earned the undying enmity of the 

 Barolong natives, who trap and kill it wherever and when- 

 ever they can. It nests in the reed-beds which border the 

 spruits (rivulets), many hundreds of nests being congre- 

 gated together in a space of as many square feet. It is not 

 an uncommon sight to see two or three nests suspended 

 between a single pair of reeds. The nest is shaped like a 



