Red-tailed Bush-Lark. 469 
Best * told me that he had found a nest with two eggs, but 
had left them undisturbed, not collecting eggs himself or 
knowing that I wanted them. However, he seemed con- 
fident that he could find the nest again, as it was among 
some small tussocks of green grass at the edge of a pool. 
He said that the bird fluttered off the eggs at his feet, 
feigning partial disablement. Alas! when we revisited the 
“hor” together there was more than one pool with short 
green tussocks near it; Best was uncertain about the exact 
spot—and consequently the eggs of Mirafra erythropygia are 
still, so far as | know, undescribed ! 
The flight of these birds is undulating and buoyant, and 
their wings appear strikingly large and broad when they 
are passing overhead. 
To sum up my field-notes, the Red-tailed Bush-Lark is 
abundant in the country indicated ; it is a bird of powerful 
flight, probably travelling long distances to water, aud 
rapidly collecting in numbers to follow the track of a grass- 
fire ; it settles a great deal in trees, is on the whole a 
remarkably shy bird, and appears to breed from January to 
March, at which season the males sing beautifully while 
soaring. 
Captain Shelley proposes (‘ Birds of Africa,’ i. p. 15) 
“the new generic name of Pinarocorys for the reception of 
Alauda nigricans Sundev. and Alauda erythropygia Strickl., 
in which the coloured pattern of the wings is very dissimilar 
in the males and females, and the crown and back uniform 
in old birds.’ And again, in his diagnosis of the genus 
(op. cit. p. 71), he says: “full-plumaged birds have the 
crown and back uniform brown ; quills with or without a 
rufous pattern, and most of the centre ones have broad pale 
terminal margins, but these strongly marked variations in 
the colour of the wings are neither seasonal nor specific 
characters, but apparently denote the sex.” 
* Best, whose name will be known to members of the Old Hawking 
Club, was an English faleoner in the service of my companion, Gilbert 
Blaine. He was very keen on birds, but confined his collecting mostly 
to the Hawks and to brightly-coloured species. 
SER, IX.—VUL. 1. at 
