244 



Immature bird of the year. Similar to the specimens last described, but the beak is shaded with yellow 

 towards the tip and on the lower mandible ; legs dark brown. 



Nestling (Nubia, April). Dull black, except the rump, upper and under tail-coverts, crissum, and tail; 

 central tail-feathers black, except at the tip, where they are white ; remaining rectrices white, marked 

 with blackish brown towards the tip ; beak yellowish ; legs didl brown. 



Obs. The immature and adult birds of this species have for long been considered and referred to as distinct, 

 the former under the name of S. leucopygia, and the latter under that of S. leucocephala ; but there is 

 now no doubt that they are the same species. This bird not unfrequently breeds in the immature 

 plumage, which has tended to confuse matters not a little. I have in the series before me specimens 

 with black crowns, others with only a few white feathers on that part, one in particular with a single 

 one, others white with a few black feathers, and, again, others with pure white crowns, thus showing a 

 perfect gradation from the black to the white crown. The average size of a dozen specimens of both 

 sexes is — culmen 0'85 inch, wing 3'98, tail 3 - 03, tarsus 1*04. 



The present species has been so long confounded with Sax/cola leucura and Saxicola leucuroidcs, 

 that it is not very easy to ascertain which notes refer to this, and which to S. leucura. It may, 

 however, be taken for granted that all references to 3. leucura from N.E. Africa must be taken 

 to mean the present species, as the Black Chat does not appear to occur there, but only this 

 bird, though in North-western Africa both birds are found. 



The White-headed Chat is only known to inhabit Northern Africa and Palestine. Canon 

 Tristram, who, when first in Algeria, looked on the immature and adult birds of the present 

 species as being distinct, says that he did not observe the latter so far north as the former. 

 Mr. J. H. Gurncy, jun., however, states (Ibis, 1871, p. 79) that he found the adult and young 

 birds frequenting the same localities. They were, he says, " common in the oases of Gardai, not 

 actually in the gardens, but all about the ' weds ' (i. e. dry rocky watercourses) and on the wells, 

 where I suspect they breed. They also enter the town freely, to perch upon the flat-roofed 

 houses. Their flight is slightly undulating." Major Loche, who refers to it (I. c.) under the 

 names of 1). monacha and I), nigra, states that his party first obtained it near Ouarglo, on the 

 extreme confines of the French possessions in the Sahara, and he subsequently found its nest in 

 the oases of the Beni-Mzab. It has likewise been met with in West Africa, where, according to 

 Hartlaub (Orn. W. Afr. p. 6G), it has occurred in Sierra Leone. In North-east Africa it has 

 been met with in Egypt and Nubia. Captain Shelley, writing on the ornithology of Egypt, says 

 (Ibis, 1871, p. 53), " these birds are first met with by the Nile tourist at Assouan, and on entering 

 Nubia become extremely abundant. As early as April I saw several young birds, all black- 

 headed, two of which I shot, in company with their undoubted parents, white-headed birds, of 

 which I likewise killed two. It is comparatively rare to meet with a purely black-headed 

 specimen, most having one or more white feathers on the crown. I have shot them with the 

 black and white feathers mixed in nearly equal proportions. I never saw a black-headed bird 

 paired with a white-headed one ; but Mr. E. Cavendish Taylor tells me that he has observed 

 them together: the rarity of such an occurrence may, I think, be explained by their choosing 

 their mates the first year, and consequently pairs being of the same age. 



" These birds are only shot in Egypt by the Nile tourists — that is, killed before the month 

 of April, in the early part of the breeding-season. Now, if a white-headed specimen is shot, its 



