96 SOME BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA 



one sometimes sees in the wings of beetles. The bird 

 presents a brilliant appearance as he darts across the 

 veldt with the sun shining on his glossy feathers. The 

 female is coloured a uniform brown, and is without the 

 two long centre feathers that protrude from the tail of 

 the male bird. The long curved beak shown in the 

 illustration will give some idea of how these birds obtain 

 their food, for although insects form a considerable 

 portion of their diet, they are equally fond of obtaining 

 the nectar from flowers, and will sit on the edges of the 

 protea flower and dip their long beaks down to the roots 

 of the petals ; I have also noticed them cling upside 

 down to the stem of a kind of heath, and extract the 

 juice from the bell-like flowers, one by one. 



The Malachite Sun-birds appear to feed their young 

 largely on insects, as the bird figured in the illustration 

 was just going to the nest at the time the photograph 

 was taken. Their eggs, two in number, are large in 

 proportion to the birds themselves, and are very like 

 those of the English House Sparrow ; somehow, these 

 seemed too commonplace for the birds, from whose 

 appearance one would have expected a more delicately 

 coloured egg. We generally found the nest placed in a 

 bush, and in one instance in a tree, at an elevation of 

 fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, the nests being 

 domed, made of rough grass outside, and lined thickly 

 with feathers. 



The Cape Long-tailed Sun-birds also were to be 

 seen in the vicinity of Houw Hoek, but they were not 

 nesting at the time we were there. These birds are 

 without the tropical plumage that distinguishes many of 

 the Sun-birds, and are coloured a lightish brown, but 



