The Oologists' Record, June i, 1922. 



taken near Zomba on December 12th, 1921. They were larger, 

 and blunter at the small end, than those of Prionops, and were very 

 pale blue with a quantity of small dark spots chiefly disposed about 

 the middle. The nest seemed larger and shallower and less neat 

 than that of Prionops : there was some greyish web around the 

 sides. It had been badly collected and I have no details of site. 

 I should put the eggs of this bird as among the rarest of our Nyasa- 

 land Shrikes'. • 



Tschagra australis (Smith). — The local form of the Three- 

 streaked Bush-shrike' is congener (Rchw.), which is found from the 

 Zambezi north to Iringa in Tanganyika. I found it rare about 

 Blantyre, but it seems commoner near Zomba. It is not at all 

 easy, despite its smaller size, to distinguish without glasses from 

 the next species ; and the clear whistling notes are much alike. 

 Both species love the ground and bushes with long grass growing 

 about them. The native name at Chiromo on the Shire is Nkudan- 

 choncho : what the Anyanja call it I never found out, as I had no 

 boy with me the only time I saw one close at hand. This was on 

 November 5th, 1921, and I saw, as sometimes happens, the sitting 

 bird before I noticed the nest. This was set in a fork of a prickly 

 acacia at about five feet from the ground, just outside a belt of 

 dense scrub fringing a small stream. The two eggs were noticeably 

 less in size than those. of T. senegalus, but otherwise like those of 

 that bird. They are roundish, white, with a quantity of streaky 

 Bunting-like markings of pinkish-brown on the top half of the 

 egg. One measures 20 mm. x 16 mm. The nest was also very 

 like a small one of the Senegal Shrike, being a small shallow saucer 

 of twigs with a little web-binding on the edge I should be disposed 

 to say, from the fact that I never saw it away from stream-valleys, 

 that those are its natural habitat in these parts. In Uganda 

 it was not so with T. australis minor, which bred plentifulh" in the 

 dry scrub in the high country above the Victoria Hill near Jinja, 



Tschagra senegalus (Linn.). — I wrote a note in Vol. I, at p. 6, on 

 the Black-crowned Bush Shrike at Mombasa. Since then I have 

 seen much of this species and its nidification about Blantyre. 

 Comparing three East African sets of eggs with over a dozen from 

 Nyasaland, I find that, contrary to the general rule, the Northern 

 eggs are slightly larger, in one instance considerably so. Every 

 Nyasaland egg exhibits in greater or less degree the Bunting-scrawls 

 which are conspicuoush- absent from Mombasa eggs. In no case 



