PLOCEID^ VIDUA 143 



Portuguese East Africa, extending as far north as 5 N. lat. On 

 the west coast it has been recorded from Angola, Sierra Leone 

 and Senegambia. In Eastern Cape Colony and Natal it is very 

 generally distributed in marshy localities, as at Alice (Layard) ; 

 East London (Rickard) ; King William's Town (Trevelyan) ; Eland's 

 Post (Atmore) : Pinetown, Natal (Shelley) ; Newcastle (Butler, 

 Reid and Feilden) ; Drakensberg (Buckley). It is somewhat local 

 but fairly common in the Transvaal and Matabili Land ; but it has 

 not been recorded from Great Namaqua or Damara Lands. 



Habits. In winter these Widow Birds gather in considerable 

 flocks, in which they frequently mix with other of the Weaver- 

 finches, and in which the females invariably outnumber the males 

 in the proportion of from ten to fifty to one. They frequent grassy 

 plains, or old fields of Kaffir-corn, spots in which they find abun- 

 dance of small seeds on the ground. At night they retire to roost 

 in reeds, or, if these be wanting, in the long grass. As soon as the 

 males, in spring, commence to assume their long tails and breeding 

 plumage, the flocks break up, and each male, accompanied by from 

 eight to fifteen females, betakes himself to some neighbouring reed- 

 bed, or marshy spot overgrown with long grass. Here he takes up 

 his station on one of the tallest weeds, shows off his tail, which is 

 blown about by the slightest breeze, makes an occasional sally to 

 drive off another male, or hovers, with jerky, erratic flight, over 

 the rushes or grass in which the females are presumably hiding or 

 building their nests ; for they, unlike the male, are not much in 

 evidence at this season, but keep well out of sight. The nests are 

 domed, with a small entrance at the side, carefully woven of fine 

 grass in the centre of a thick tuft of grass, many of the growing 

 grass stems being built into the walls of the nest, while others are 

 plaited so as to form an arched bower over it. The nest is, in fact, 

 very like that of Coliopasser axillaris. I have never been fortunate 

 enough to find the eggs. 



Genus V. YIDUA. 



Type. 



Yidua, Cuvier, Legons d'Anat. Comp. i, Tabl. 2 (1800). V. principalis. 



Bill more or less lengthened, cone-shaped, compressed laterally ; 

 the culmen much arched or nearly straight from the base to the tip, 

 and advancing on the forehead to a point ; the lateral margins 

 sinuated or straight, the gonys lengthened and ascending ; the 



