ENNEOCTONUS COLLURIO 283 
Africa, write: “Certain females occasionally assume the 
garb of the male, as is the case with some other birds, 
but this ‘freak’ does not appear to be connected: with 
age or want of reproductive power.” They further remark 
that the majority of the birds seen in South Africa, from 
November to March, migrate through Eastern Africa and the 
Nile Valley into Europe, for they have not been detected 
crossing to or from Europe at the Straits of Gibraltar. 
A certain proportion, however, remain in Africa throughout 
the year, but its migrations do not extend to the immediate 
neighbourhood of Cape Town.” In Natal, near Durban, 
during the whole of the time I remained there, from the 
middle of February to the middle of April, the Red-backed 
Shrike appeared to me to be equally plentiful, and about 
as abundant as the Fiscal Shrike was at Cape Town; and 
Mr. T. Ayres remarks that in Natal it is tolerably abundant 
the whole year round. Myr. Guy Marshall informs us_ that 
they arrive in Mashonaland in October, breed there, and 
depart again in April. During the nesting season the male 
is in the habit of impaling insects, small reptiles, and 
even young birds, with the object apparently of supplying 
the sitting female or the young, for the captured insects 
are not usually killed; and this peculiar habit, so common 
to the Shrikes, is, I believe, confined, or nearly so, to 
the breeding season. In Gazaland, during the summer, 
Mr. Swynnerton records it as more abundant than Fscus 
collaris; and his natives brought him a number of immature 
birds in February and March. The crops examined con- 
tained beetles, grasshoppers, larve (both coleopterous and 
lepidopterous), a spider, and a small bug. 
Chubb states that it is a common bird near Bulawayo 
from November to March, and that it is generally seen 
perched in some conspicuous position on a thorn-bush. He 
