on a Private Collection of Living Birds. 175



for its Hawk-like upper mandible, which is of a deep blue-black

colour contrasting sharply with that of the lower bill, which is

ivory white. I am not sure that the Mousebird is content with

the mere possession of an Accipitrine beak, at any rate my bird

is under grave suspicion of having used it to some purpose, since

he was found recently dragging about the dead and partly-

devoured body of an Avadavat ( Estrilda aviandava'). The head

of the Mousebird is surmounted by a thin crest of wiry feathers,

which can be raised or depressed at will. The flight of this

species is short but rapid : when it settles on a tree (as remarked

by T.ayard years ago) the bird alights on one of the lower branches

and jerkily creeps upward into a higher situation. When creep¬

ing down a bush towards its food (I often suspend a bunch of



grapes to a convenient twig in order to study this point) Colins

strialns, instead of flitting along the branches as a Passerine

bird would do, edges its wa}' slowly down grasping parallel twigs

instead of different portions of the same one. O11 reaching the

fruit the Mousebird bites a piece out of it, and swallows it with

a masticating action of the beak: it will often pick up a loose

grape from the floor and fly away with it; on alighting, the grape

is shifted from the beak to the foot, which grasps it in a singular,

and almost monkey-like manner, while the bird solemnly pro-



