30 The Oologists' Record, June i, 1922. 



and 6th, 8th, nth, and 15th December: this period coinciding with 

 that of the advanced growth of new leaves on the scrub alter the 

 fires had passed through it. It will be seen that these birds begin 

 nesting later than E. Jiaviventris. Three is clearly the normal 

 clutch. 



Emberiza Jiaviventris (Steph.). — ^The Golden-breasted Bunting is 

 distinctly a commoner bird than its larger congener, and inhabits 

 the same class of scrubby country, but I have seen it at lower 

 levels than the Greater Bunting is ever found at, particularly at the 

 foot of Zomba Mountain, which is well below 3,000 feet. The 

 bright colours of both these Buntings render them very conspicuous 

 when the earth is blackened from the " fires of spring," and at that 

 time there is no more pleasing sight in the Masuku Woods than this 

 really beautiful little bird, as it picks about on a charred patch 

 of soil or flies up at one's approach to a low branch of which the 

 extremities are bursting into shoots of red and green. I doubt 

 whether there is any migratioii, even local, of this species, and it 

 is probably the absence of cover and the fact that they are pairing 

 that brings them so much in evidence in early October. Dates of 

 sets in my collection, usually of the normal three eggs, are : — 

 October 26th and 28th, November 3rd and 7th, December 5th, 

 9th and 12th, and January 13th. The last-mentioned was the 

 first nest I found. A lad from Rhodesia was spending his school 

 holidays in Zomba, and as we were exploring together an old Ceara 

 plantation for Sunbirds' nests I noticed what seemed like the very 

 ragged remains of an old Weaver- finch's nest, quite exposed in 

 a leafless fork at about 14 feet from the ground. I should not have 

 given it any further thought, but the boy insisted on climbing to 

 it, and to my amazement came down with a pair of very obvious 

 Bunting's eggs. We waited a long time, but no bird came near the 

 nest, and at last we left without being sure of what they were. 

 However, this wood was full of Golden-breasted Buntings, and such 

 little doubts as I had of the identity of the eggs were dispelled in 

 the following spring, when I found a number of nests near Blantyre. 

 The nest is smaller than that of E. major and of darker-coloured 

 materials. It is a frail, loose cup of dead grasses or fine twigs, 

 with many projecting ends, and is lined either with rootlets or, more 

 commonly, ox-hair. The usual site is at about 6 feet from the 

 ground, in a fork of a particular kind of straggly shrub which grows 

 among the Masuku trees. Nests found in October and early 



