164 PROMEROPS CAFER. 



them will mount twenty or thirty feet in the air, incline his 

 body backwards, violently jerk his tail up and down, and at 

 the same time rustle the feathers together, and bring his wings 

 with sharp, resounding ' claps ' against his sides, before 

 returning to his perch to indulge in an outburst of song. 

 Occasionally a male may be seen to throw the longer tail- 

 feathers into a double curve. 



" At the same season the hens amuse themselves by flying 

 round and round in a small circle. 



" This Sugar-bird breeds in winter, in May, June, and July, 

 the flowering season of one of the larger white proteas. The 

 nest, usually completed towards the end of May, is somewhat 

 large, deeply cup-shaped, and strongly built of small sticks and 

 twigs of heath, fibrous rootlets, dry grass, and the spines of 

 pine trees, lined with pine leaves and the red downy seeds of 

 a protea. It is carefully concealed, sometimes in a tuft of 

 heath near the ground, at others in the crotch of a protea- 

 bush four or five feet above it, but more generally, in the 

 neighbourhood of Cape Town, in a thick young pine tree from 

 four to ten feet above the ground. On one occasion I found 

 a nest built on some broken-down sedge in a swampy hollow. 

 Two eggs are laid, and these are incubated, as far as I have 

 observed, by the female only. She sits very closely, with her 

 long tail projecting at an angle over the edge of the nest. 

 The eggs are hatched at the end of fifteen or sixteen days, 

 and the young remain in the nest for about five weeks. The 

 eggs, usually laid about the end of May or early in June, 

 vary considerably in size, shape, and colour ; some are much 

 elongated, others rounded ovates. As a rule the ground 

 colour varies from light buff to reddish-brown ; this may 

 be more or less covered with blotches, scrawls, and zig-zag 

 markings of deep purplish black, or with finer spots and 

 lines of brown. Many eggs resemble those of the European 



