42 DEL AGO A BAY. 



I have also some small black and white rivals 

 who are very active in the pursuit of their 

 food, hovering about and suddenly making a 

 dart at an insect on a tree-stem with lightning 

 rapidity ; and some little brown fellows who 

 keep on the ground in flocks and pick up the 

 moths hidden among the leaves, chattering in- 

 cessantly all the time. 



The lovely blue and drab waxbills (Habropyga 

 ccerulescens) are also very numerous, and during 

 the love-making period the male has a very 

 pretty habit of taking a little piece of grass or 

 twig in his beak and dancing up and down with 

 it, singing all the while to his sweetheart, who 

 sits by and listens quietly. 



To the right of my cottage, in front, there is 

 a large tangled bush composed of several small 

 trees and a species of very fine-branched Eu- 

 phorbia ; the whole woven together by creepers. 

 In this bush I have seven or eight varieties of 

 birds nesting, ranging in size from a beavy, 

 lumpy (the only word capable of describing him) 

 black or brown fellow (Centropus Natalensis), 



