CREATOPHORA CARUNCULATA 127 



deposited their eggs. For hundreds of 3'ards every thorny 

 l)ush is packed full of cup-shaped nests, even the spaces 

 between the nests being often filled up with sticks or rubbish, 

 through which narrow passages are left for the ingress and 

 egress of the birds. Many Starlings that can find no room 

 in the bushes, build on the ground, or under stones, or in 

 holes, and these unfortunates, together with their eggs or 

 young, ultimately become the victims of the smaller car- 

 nivorous mammals or of snakes. It frequently happens 

 also that either the young locusts are hatched in insufficient 

 numbers or that they migrate before the young Starlings are 

 fledged. In either case large numbers of birds perish of 

 hunger, the majority of the old birds and the more advanced 

 young following the locusts. Four or five eggs are laid, 

 usually in August or September ; these are of a very pale 

 blue colour, sometimes with a few specks of black at the 

 larger end, but usually unspotted. They are rather pyriform 

 in shape, and average 1'20 x 0'90." 



Dr. Eeichenow (Vog. Afr. ii. pp. 670, 671) gives a full list 

 of the places from whence specimens have been recorded, so 

 it will suffice for me to remark that these Starlings are very 

 abundant and generally distributed throughout South Africa 

 and the eastern half of the continent to as far north as 

 Shoa, where Antinori found them in large flocks throughout 

 the year and breeding in the valley of Daimbi in May. In 

 Angola, the Nile district and westward, it is apparently not 

 so abundant, and is probably a " straggler " only in Arabia, 

 where on one occasion Major Yerbury met with a party of 

 five or six near Aden. Heuglin found it along the Blue and 

 White Nile, in Abyssinia and Kordofan only during the wet 

 season, and according to Emin it was not very common 

 at Lado. 



In Somaliland Mr. Elliot met with these Starlings in 



