208 CAMPEPHAGA NIGRA 
bushes and trees carefully searching the twigs and leaves 
for caterpillars, spiders and other insects as they go, and 
occasionally flying down to pick a fallen morsel from the 
eround. They are usually silent birds, but sometimes utter 
a single harsh note. The nest, singularly small compared 
with the size of the bird, is saddled on a fork near the 
extremity of a branch, and usually at some height above the 
eround, so that it is either altogether invisible from below, 
or looks like some slight growth or excrescence of the bark. 
It is built of a few fine twigs and a little moss bound together 
with spiders’ webs and thickly covered with grey lichens. The 
eges, two in number, are grey-green in ground colour, uni- 
formly spotted and streaked all over with brown. They 
measure, on an average, 0°90 X 0°68.” 
From the Zambesi, Mr. Boyd Alexander writes: “ Observed 
singly and in pairs towards the breeding season, which com- 
mences in December. They keep much to the tall acacia 
trees and their flight is rapid and straight. The glossy steel- 
black of their plumage serves always to distinguish them 
from the Drongo Shrikes, in whose company they are not 
unfrequently found.” To the north of this river these 
Cuckoo-Shrikes are abundant through British Central Africa, 
whence specimens have been received from nine different 
localities, and in like manner they are generally distributed 
over the whole of Portuguese and German Hast Africa. Bohm 
records its occurrence throughout the country he explored 
between Zanzibar and Lake Tanganyika, but found it most 
plentiful to the west of that lake in the mountains of the 
Marungu country. Fischer likewise found the birds common 
in German East Africa northward to Mombasa, and observed 
them capturing insects on the wing like Flycatchers, and 
hunting over the leaves of the trees for caterpillars. ‘This 
latter habit was recognized by Leyaillant, who gave to this 
