SUNBIBDS 75 



cream-coloured, streaked and blotched with purple-brown 

 and slate-grey. 



It is not uncommon around Grahamstown, Cape Colony, 

 and at Johannesburg, Transvaal. 



The Mouse-coloured Sunbird (C. verreauxi) is, as its 

 name implies, of an ashy-brown colour below with 

 pectoral tufts of bright red. Its range is rather limited, 

 being so far only recorded from Eastern Cape Colony, 

 Natal and Zululand. 



In Albany it was formerly fairly common, but of late 

 years has become somewhat scarce. We were lucky 

 enough to take two nests on January 5, 1907, in a thickly 

 wooded kloof off Featherstone Valley, near Grahamstown. 

 These were both untidy-looking pendent structures of 

 grass, decorated all over with dead leaves stuck on with 

 cobwebs and lined with vegetable down and feathers. It 

 is almost invariably hung from a branch close to a krantz 

 (cliff). The eggs are so thickly mottled and blotched 

 with chocolate and purplish-brown as to appear at first 

 sight of a general rich brown colour ; it is the prettiest 

 of all the Sunbird eggs. 



The Orange-breasted Sunbird (Anthobaphes violacea) is 

 metallic-purple on the chest and has the rest of the 

 under parts of an orange-yellow, the breast being tinged 

 with red. It is confined to Cape Colony, ranging as far 

 west as Albany. It breeds in winter, building an oval, 

 dome-shaped nest in a tuft of heath, and lays two eggs 

 of a white ground, marked with grey-brown. 



The last representative of the family is the tiny 

 Collared Sunbird (Anthothreptes collaris), which is green 

 above and yellow below, the yellow being separated from 

 the green throat by a band of violet. 



