Some firefinches and other Gambian birds.



113



nest and the broad end upward, and the earth which has been

scraped out to form the cavity is employed to confine the outer

circle and keep the whole in proper position. The hens relieve each

other in the task of sitting during the day and the male takes his

turn during the night, when, in the wild state, his superior strength

is required to protect the eggs or the newly-fledged young from the

jackals, tiger-cats, and other enemies. Some of these animals, in¬

formant advises, are not unfrequently found lying dead near the

nest, destroyed by a stroke from the foot of this powerful bird.

The eggs weigh about three pounds and, being quite a delicacy, are

served now and then at the great hotels in Pasadena.



SOME FIREFINCHES AND OTHER

GAMBIAN BIRDS.


By Dr. E. HOPKINSON.


[Continued from Vol. VII., No. 2, p. 61.


The Yinaceous Firefinch (Lagonosticta vinacea ).


This is another of the more uncommon West African ‘ wax-

biljs,’ and a particularly attractive one. In Gambia it is distinctly

the rarest of our firefinches, and like the spotted firefinch (but to a

greater degree) very local and restricted in its distribution. In my

own Province I think I know every place where it is to be found,

and they are but few; elsewhere throughout the Protectorate, except

near the coast, I have met with it in various places, but nowhere in

any numbers and always among or in the immediate neighbourhood

of bamboos; sites, which in this country are practically ahvays the

ironstone ridges and the valleys in between, as our bamboos are of the

upland variety. When thinking then of Gambian bamboos, one must

not imagine a mass of dense water-side growth, such as one usually

associates with the word ‘ bamboo,’ and which would be correct for

the larger water-loving' plant of the East and elsewhere, but on the

other hand, always bear in mind some of the driest possible places

in this, the driest part (except the Sahara itself) in what is, I sup¬

pose, the driest of all the continents. Such places are low rocky

ridges covered with a shallow and irregular amount of soil, which



