410 MALACONOTUS HYPOPYRRHUS 
Colony; it is also met with in the interior to Nyasaland, 
the eastern half of Rhodesia, and the bush districts of the 
Transvaal. 
In Cape Colony it is only found in the eastern districts ; 
Shortridge obtained examples near Port St. John’s, but 
it was not common there. In Natal I only obtained one 
specimen while I was at Durban, and never having seen it alive 
I considered it rare, until one of my collectors, Mr. Gordge, 
sent me nine specimens from that locality. In the bush-veld 
of the Transvaal it was noticed by Ayres on the Lehtaba 
River, by Taylor in Swaziland, and on the Umyuli River in 
Mashonaland by Ayres, when in company with my late 
friend, Mr. Jameson. 
Swynnerton, who found this Shrike fairly common in 
Gazaland and the eastern border districts of Rhodesia, writes 
as follows: “This bird is a great eater of Neptunides 
polychrous, a Cetoniid beetle which is extremely destructive 
to our pineapples, and nearly every stomach which I have 
examined has contained its remains. Care is necessary in 
handling a captured bird, as they bite fiercely, inflicting nasty 
cuts. One which I kept in captivity for some time fed freely 
on locusts, grasshoppers and their larve, and would utter when 
alarmed a harsh cry, ‘ Chichy-chichichy.’ 
“On November 12 I was shown a nest of this bird placed 
on the terminal twigs of a projecting branch of a tree (Bridelia 
sp.) about 20 feet from the ground in a wooded kloof. It 
was a broad flat structure about 9 inches in diameter, of dry 
twigs resembling a doye’s nest. It was not lined and very 
loosely put together. It was in a quite inaccessible position, 
and the eggs, four in number, were only obtained with the 
help of a butterfly net at the end of a 20-foot pole. They 
were large and rounded with large pale brown and grey 
blotches, chiefly about the larger end. They average 11 x 0°85. 
