136 WILD LIFE UNDER THE EQUATOR. 
The nest is round in shape, or nearly so, with a narrow 
passage for entrance and exit leading down one side and 
opening beneath. It issecurely fastened to an outstretched 
twig, and I have sometimes counted in one tree more than 
two thousand of such pendent little balls, each inhabited - 
by a family, male and female, of these birds; and once I 
am sure I saw four or five thousand of these nests. This 
I saw in the Ishogo country, of which I may speak to you 
one of these days. The birds when building strip the 
leaf off the palm, or plantain, or banana tree. They split 
the leaf into very narrow strips, not more than two or 
three lines wide, but through the whole length of the leaf 
in the palm, and the whole breadth of the leaf in the 
plantain, beginning from the rib. 
Male and female both work at gathering this mater ial, 
and every piece is brought up tothe tree. How strange- 
ly they look as they fly with them from the place where 
they took them to that where their colony is situated! It 
seems as if they were carrying away a long, narrow rib- 
bon. The pendent twig having been chosen, the birds 
begin to turn their leaf-strips over the twig, and to inter- 
lace them below in such a way as to enable the finished 
nest to shed rain. The birds work with the greatest as- 
- siduity with both beak and feet, sometimes with the head 
up, sometimes withthe head down. OftenI would see one 
little fellow one minute holding by his feet and working the 
strips in with his bill, the next suspended by his bill and 
pushing all together with his feet, then adroitly slip- 
ping inside, and by pushing and working with his body 
giving the nest a round shape. The entrance is the last ~ 
made, and they are knowing enough to build its mouth 
down, so that the inside may be sheltered from the rains, 
