CORMORANTS 141 



tail cobalt-blue ; throat white, merging into a pale fulvous 

 on the lower breast, streaked with dark brown. 



This bird ranges from Swellendam eastwards through 

 Cape Colony, and northwards to the Northern Transvaal. 

 It is a noisy fearless bird, and subsists chiefly on insects 

 of various kinds, millepedes and small fish. The nest- 

 hole is usually very foul-smelling. The eggs are gener- 

 ally four or five in number. 



There is a smaller rather closely allied bird, the striped 

 Kingfisher (H. clielicuti) which need not concern us here. 



The Angola Kingfisher (H. cyanoleucus), easily recognis- 

 able by the upper mandible being red while the lower 

 is black, and the Mangrove Kingfisher (H. senegaloides) 

 are scarce birds within our limits. 



CORMORANTS. 



The Cormorants (Family Phalacrocoracidce) are essen- 

 tially sea birds, but two of the species have been recorded 

 as breeding on inland waters. 



The White-breasted Duiker (Phalacrocorax lucidus) is 

 white on the sides and forepart of the neck, from the 

 throat downwards, extending to the upper breast ; rest 

 of under-surface and the most of the upper parts black. 

 The head is adorned with a few lengthened feathers, and 

 the tail contains fourteen rectrices. 



This bird is found all along the South African coast, 

 and inland it has been recorded from Kroonstad by Bar- 

 ratt, Vredefort Road (Hamilton), Rhodesia (Marshall), 

 and, more recently, from the Compies River, near the 

 Swaziland Border, by C. H. Taylor. It breeds on most 

 of the islands off the Cape Coast, and Sparrow found a 

 pair nesting in a willow- tree on the shore of a vlei at 

 Bethlehem, Orange River Colony, on May 16. 



