218 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



into an oven-like form at the inner end. The whole colony only 

 covers a few square yards, though it consists of at least thirty, and 

 more frequently from eighty to a hundred pairs. The circular 

 openings to the various holes, measuring only from one and a 

 half to two inches in diameter, are not more than six inches dis- 

 tant from each other. It is difficult to understand how each pair 

 knows the entrance to its own hole; yet even when they come from 

 a distance the delicately-winged active birds fly straight to the 

 proper holes without hesitation or apparent consideration; their 

 incomparably sharp eyes, which can detect a passing fly a hundred 

 paces away, never mislead them. The bustling life about the colony 

 is a fascinating sight. Every tree or bush in the neighbourhood 

 is decorated with at least one pair of the beautiful, sociable birds; 

 on every branch which affords an outlook sits a pair, and each mate 

 takes a tender interest in all that concerns the other. In front of 

 the nest-holes the bustle is like that about a bee-hive; some glide 

 in, others glide out; some come, others go; many hover continually 

 around the entrance to their brooding-places. Only when night 

 draws on do they disappear into their holes; then all is quiet and 

 still. 



At a different part of the bank, where tall trees droop over the 

 water, or are surrounded by it when it is very high, the golden 

 weaver-birds have established a colony. They, too, brood in com- 

 panies, but they build hanging nests cleverly plaited from stalks 

 or fibres, and attached to the points of the outermost branches 

 of the trees. No covetous monkey or other egg-robber, not even 

 a snake, can approach these nests without running a risk of 

 falling into the water. At least thirty, but more frequently forty 

 to sixty, weaver-birds build on a single tree, and their nests give 

 it a most characteristic aspect; indeed, they have a striking effect 

 on the whole landscape. Unlike other birds, it is in this case not 

 the females but the males who build the nest, and they do it with 

 such unstinted eagerness that they make work for themselves after 

 they have finished what is really necessary. Carrying in their 

 bills a stalk newly bitten off, or a teased-out fibre, they hang by 

 their feet to a twig, or to the nest itself, keep themselves in position 



