The Oologists' Record, June i, 1922. 31 



November, are quite exposed, but later I found them better hidden 

 among tufts of leaves, and at greater heights. One or two were 

 at nearly 20 feet. Nineteen eggs in my collection exhibit very little 

 difference in type. They are of a lighter green ground colour than 

 those of E. major. All exhibit near the larger end a well-defined 

 zone of -almost black hieroglyphic markings above greyish sub- 

 surface ones, and on many there are rounded black spots as well. 

 The small end is freer of markings than the corresponding part 

 in eggs of the Greater Bunting. An egg, selected at random, 

 measures 19 J mm. x 14 mm., but the eggs appear, in comparison 

 with those of E. major, smaller than these measurements suggest, 

 and there is no likelihood of confusion between them. 



Fringillaria tahapisi (A. Sm.). — ^The African Rock Bunting is 

 plentiful, at least in the winter, in the hilly broken country just 

 north of Blantyre, but in Zomba I only saw it once. Whether 

 there is any local mo\'ement I am uncertain ; however, I went to 

 Blantyre earh^ in March and do not remember seeing these Buntings 

 till the middle of April, when the males were already beginning to 

 sing. On April 19th, I watched one pair for over an hour without 

 result. The male had two stations, on trees about 60 yards apart, 

 one on top of a small stony " bult," the other near the bottom of a 

 similar hillock. He called, with exactly the same strain of seven 

 or eight notes, every ten seconds, and the female answered him 

 each time with a shorter strophe from flatter ground 100 yards 

 away. My observation post was a small bush half-wa}^ between 

 the bults. The male would sometimes fly down to earth and seemed 

 very busy there, but always returned to one or the other tree. 

 When I changed my position to the second bult both birds came quite 

 close to me, and made themselves very bus\' on the ground, 

 singing all the time. I found nothing, however, and it was not 

 till a month later that, chancing to re-pass the spot, I put up the 

 female from her nest containing three newly hatched young. It 

 was built just where I had seen both birds on the ground together, 

 a few yards away from the bottom of the hill, at the side of a big 

 stone. Afterwards, I found that at least twenty pairs were breeding 

 in this area (Chirimba, old coffee fields), which covers perhaps 500 

 acres, and contains several small dry streambeds with rocky sides, 

 and, away from these, many knolls where large boulders lie embedded 

 and piled up. In the winter few birds are singing, and the notes 

 of these little Buntings fill the windless air. I found altogether 



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