TEXTOR INTERMEDIUS 319 



met with them nesting in large colonies at Ikang in TJkamba. 

 From Somaliand Mr. Lort Phillips writes : " Very plentiful 

 in flocks near Faf in the interior of the plateau, which in 

 the rainy season becomes a lake. In March they were busily 

 building colonies of nests in the higher trees. In habits they 

 much remind one of Starlings, especially when feeding on the 

 ground." 



The species is well represented in the British Museum 

 from Somaliland and Southern Abyssinia, also by two of 

 Lord Delamere's specimens from Msara to the north-east 

 of Mount Kenia and two from Shoa. Mr. Jackson's collection 

 contains an adult male and an immature female from Yonte 

 near the mouth of the Jub Eiver and one from the Kikuyu 

 country, while two specimens from Njemps belong to T. 

 alhirostris. This is an interesting fact, showing how the 

 range of the two closely allied species meet, and it is not 

 improbable that they may sometimes interbreed, and this may 

 account for a few specimens of T. intermedins, including the 

 type of T. scionanus having the basal portion of the bill some- 

 what swollen as in T. alhirostris ; a character which appears 

 to occur only towards the junction of the range of the two 

 species. The type of T. scioanus was obtained by Antinori 

 at Daiinbi in Shoa, where, according to Ragazzi, the genus is 

 poorly represented. To this form Mr. Oscar Neumann refers 

 a bird he procured at Kwa Kitoto in Kavirondo, so that any 

 naturalist wishing to recognise D. scioanus as a good subspecies 

 will find its range confined to a long narrow strip of country 

 separating the range of T. alhlventris from that of T. 

 intermedins. 



