Helmet-birds 



737 



notes. It places its nest, which is deeply cup-shaped and composed of strips 

 of bark and lined with rootlets and grass, in a great variety of situations, such 

 as a hollow stump, a thick bush or clump of foliage, or on a ledge of a decayed 

 branch, a niche in a bank or a ledge of rock, and sometimes in the nests of other 

 birds; the eggs are usually three, though occasionally four or even five are found; 

 they are glossy, pearly white, blotched and spotted with olive and dull slate- 

 color. 



African Helmet Shrike. From the typical genus (Prionops), or that upon 

 which the family is based and which is confined to Africa, we may select a single 

 species, the South African Helmet Shrike (P. talacoma). About eight inches 

 in length, it has the upper parts a glossy greenish black and the neck and under 

 parts pure white, while the head is a light pearl-gray, the cheeks white, margined 

 behind by a crescent of black, and the two outer tail-feathers pure white; the bill 

 is black and the legs pale yellow. Of its habits as observed in Damara Land, 

 Mr. Andersson says : "It is always seen in flocks of from half a dozen to a dozen 

 individuals, which frequent spots, where they restlessly hop from branch to 

 branch on the bushes and lower boughs of trees, never remaining long on the 

 same tree, but hunting most systematically for insects, which, with the occasional 

 addition of young shoots and leaves, form their food." 



THE HELMET-BIRDS 



(Family Aerocharidce) 



After various classificatory vicissitudes which have successively placed it 

 among or near the Toucans, Hornbills, Swallows, Crows, Starlings, and Shrikes, 

 the peculiar Helmet-bird of Madagascar (Aerocharis prevosti} has finally and 

 probably correctly come to be accorded a family by itself and just succeeding 

 the last-named group. It is a bird of rather striking appearance, about twelve 

 inches long, with a large, compressed, swollen, and hooked bill, which is nearly, 

 or in the female quite, two inches long; the bill is not solid but filled with a 

 spongy tissue which is pearly white in color. In the male the bill is bright steel- 

 blue in life, while in the female it is lighter in color and has the tip black. The 

 sexes are somewhat different in plumage, the male having the head and neck 

 velvety black with a purplish blue gloss; while the back, including the scapulars 

 and wing-coverts, are bright bay and the tail black with the exception of the 

 two central feathers, which are like the back; the under parts are black with 

 narrow, indistinct bars of fulvous. The female has the lower parts thickly 

 barred with fulvous. According to Grandidier, the Helmet-birds frequent 

 the vast forests, where, in parties of three or four, they fly rather heavily from 

 branch to branch and from tree to tree. They are entirely insectivorous, feed- 

 ing especially upon beetles and orthoptera. As a matter of fact very little is 

 known regarding the life history of this peculiar bird, its manner of nest 

 building and caring for the young being apparently unknown. 



