The Oologists' Record, June i, 1922. 39 



difficulty in fixing identity from such an apt and African description. 

 I should say this species was equall}^ well distributed in high and 

 low areas. I can give no details of its nesting habits, but Dr. Van 

 Someren (" Ibis," July, 1916, pp. 393-4) states of the nests of closely 

 alhed congeners that they are built of rootlets and fibres and usually 

 placed in a low bush, though he took one at fifty feet. An egg 

 sent me from Chiromo (taken December 12th, 1921) was sub-ovate 

 in shape, white, with a good sprinkling of small brown and grey 

 spots tending to form a ring round the larger end. I did not 

 measure this egg, but from E. C. Chubb's catalogue of the Millar 

 Collection, Durban, the millimetre measurements would be about 

 22 X 16. There is an excellent coloured figure in that catalogue 

 frora which the egg may at once be recognised — more than one 

 can say of a good many coloured figures. The native name of this 

 bird in the Ruo District is Mwekire. 



Malaconotus olivaceus (Vieill.). — ^The form of the Grey-headed 

 Shrike found in Nyasaland is starki {W. ScL), distributed from 

 Pangani to the Cape. It is easily the most beautiful of our Shrikes, 

 and the largest, its grey head, green back and yellow underparts 

 making it, as it were, a large edition of Chlorophoneus. During 

 the winter months it appears to undertake local, perhaps merely 

 individual, migrations ; one sees it then among the trees in township 

 compounds. I first saw it, and heard its single flute-like note, in 

 Zomba in October, 1920, and speculated greatly as to where it might 

 nest. Probably, thought I, it retires to some secluded mountain 

 gully. In fact, it does nothing of the kind. A year later, on 

 October 15th, 1921, I was returning to my house at Blantyre 

 through comparatively open woodlands, when I saw in a most 

 exposed and central position, in a lightly leaved small tree at about 

 12 feet, a rough flattish nest which I should at once have put down 

 as a dove's had it not had a distinct " cup." It was empty. 

 Returning two days later, I had the pleasure of seeing a Grey-headed 

 Shrike fly from it. One egg was visible through the bottom of the 

 nest, and on the 19th I found the female sitting on what I think 

 is the full normal clutch of two eggs. I afterwards found two 

 more nests with eggs in similar positions. No other African 

 Shrike's nest I know is so conspicuous, but to an Australian there 

 suggests itself at once a nest of the Butcher-bird (Cracticus), and, 

 in a quite unrelated family, that of the Wattle-bird, Acanthochaera 

 carimadata. The nest is roughly built of coarse twigs, with a 



