The Oologists' Record, June i, 1922. 37 



to be an average measurement. The nest, as I met with it several 

 times in Uganda, is a frail shallow cup, built entirely of dry tendrils 

 and placed in an exposed fork, usually of an acacia, at about 

 ten feet from the ground. The bird itself haunts dense thickets, 

 but, as with Tschagra, the nest is always in a more open site in the 

 \'icinity. This is a bird which is far more often heard than seen, 

 and it may be, therefore, worth recording that familiar as I was 

 in Uganda with its thin mournful whistle of four or five notes, the 

 .last lower than the rest, it was not till I came to Nyasaland that 

 one morning, in my compound, I succeeded in tracing it to its source. 

 Before that I imagined it came from some much smaller bird, a 

 warbler perhaps. In Nyasaland this species is, as one would 

 expect, of a bush-loving bird, commoner in the Shire Valley than 

 in the Highlands proper, where indeed I have only met with it 

 close to Zomba. 



Laniarius major (Hartl.). — The local form of the Large Puff-back 

 Shrike) (I never saw one puff its back yet) is mossambicus (Rchw.). It 

 is a little -difficult to know what Reichenow considers a sufficient 

 basis for a species, and it is my personal opinion that as further 

 material is available we shall see L. suhlacteus (Cass.), L. ttiratii 

 (Verr.), L. aethiopicus (Gm.), L. a. bicolor ([Verr.] Hartl.), and the 

 three subspecies of L. major (Hartl.) which Reichenow enumerates, 

 all lumped into one as subspecies of L. aethiopicus (Gm.), the first 

 one to be named. WTierever you go in the central and northern 

 parts of the Ethiopian region you will meet -with this black-backed, 

 white-breasted Shrike, with more or less white in the wings ; 

 provided the locality be suitable, that is to say, well-watered and 

 scrubby. The note is always the same, a fluty whistle of volume 

 and sweetness, with sometimes an interpolated harsh scold, and 

 one bird of a pair seems to answer the other. It is very seldom seen 

 in the open, preferring to watch a stranger from the recesses of 

 a bush in which it hops from bough to bough, showing but rarely 

 the gleaming white of its under-parts. I know no Shrike whose 

 nest involves more labour in the finding. It is not much use 

 looking for it except when the birds are in very good voice, and 

 then it takes time and determination to locate the pair, while the 

 nest is more often than not in the midst of a thorny patch of 

 bramble-like shrub on the steep side of a wooded gully. I saw 

 one last Nov'ember at Deep Bay, Lake Nyasa, which was so thorn- 

 protected as to be absolutel)' impossible to get at without an axe 



