146



Iris bright light brown ; bill black, fleshy-white at base ;

feet dark brownish fleshy, claws blackish horny.


Both specimens, as noted in P.A.S.B. {loc. cit .) were similar

but one was slightly duller than the other. It is also slenderer

in make, though quite as long, and has never sung or attempted

to weave, even when separated from its fellow, which continually

uttered, when “ in colour,” its harsh unpleasant song, and was

an indefatigable weaver when it got grass to work with ; it used

to stuff bits of earth in the work. It still occasionally sings and

weaves, and sometimes flies wildly about, as it often did when in

colour. The other bird has always been much milder in

demeanour, though more restless, and less tame. It was nearly

a mouth later in completing its change of plumage ; but latterly

I have seen it also behave more like a normal male.


The brightest bird, the singer and weaver, measures :

length about 6Mu.; bill from gape about o - 8 ; wing about sin.;

tail about 2‘iiu.; shank about ’psin. The tail is much more

graduated in winter than in summer plumage, and the bill is in

the former fleshy, horny on culmen and tip, instead of black as

in the full-plumaged bird.


It may be noted as a remarkable fact that, though the

primaries of these birds had been plucked before they came into

Mr. Rutledge’s possession, and grew again soon after the

specimens were acquired by the Museum, yet these new quills

were again moulted and replaced in the ordinary way with the

other feathers.


A very characteristic point of Ploceus megarhynchus is the

long tail and short wing; as is shown by the measurements of

this specimen and of Mr. Hume’s, the difference between the

length of the wing and tail is only about the length of the shank ;

in this point, as well as in the large amount of yellow in the

plumage, P. megarhynchus approaches Ploceella javanensis. It also

possesses, like that species, nuchal hairs, but so do all the Indian

species of Ploceus , though the absence of these insignificant filo-

plumes is given, both by Mr. Oates in the Fauna of British India

(Birds, vol. II, p. 174) and Dr. Sharpe in the British Museum

Catalogue of Birds (vol. XIII, p. 406) as a character of the genus

Ploceiis as restricted by them.


It is not surprising that these authorities both united P.

megarhynchus with P. atrigula , for no doubt there is a certain

amount of intergradation between them, similar to that which

occurs between P. atrigttla and P. baya, as noticed by Mr. Hume

(Stray Feathers, vol. VI, 1878, p. 400).



