All rii/li/x irxm-eil.] Al'Kii,, 1910. 
BIRD NOTES: 
THE 
JOURNAL OF THE FOREIGN BIRD CLUB. 
The Blue-Beaked Weaver-Bird 
{Sperwospiza haematinn). 
By E. HoPKiNSON, D.S.O., M.A., M.B. 
This species is a handsome West African Weaver, very 
grosbeak-like in build, which if more commonly imported would 
be a great addition to the list of our seed-eating cage-birds. 
As will be seen from the plate (to which this sketchy 
article is a mere addendum), their chief colours are crimson and 
black, and as the artist has provided such a life-like presentation,* 
I need add nothing further in the way of description, except 
perhaps to point out the marked difference between the sexes, that 
is the entirely black belly of the male, the same part in the female 
being spotted with round white spots on a black ground. 
I know nothing from personal experience of their habits, 
as I have only seen one in the Gambia, where they must be very 
rare, but in other places lower down the coast they are much 
commoner and are stated to haunt fairly thick bush and to breed 
singly (not in colonies), making a spherical nest with an entrance 
near the top. 
The genus contains two other species, S. guttata and *S'. 
ruhricapiUa, of which the latter however is only known from two 
skins of females in the British Museum. The differences between 
the three species are fully set forth in the KEY in Shelley's " Birds 
of Africa," and this I have ventured to quote in extenso, as with it 
and our plate anyone who might obtain a specimen of the genus 
could easily identify the species. 
Head not entirely red. 
Bill only tipped with orange-red ; upper tail coverts not the 
same bright crimson as the throat. 
Upper tail-coverts and abdomen, black. ... ^haematina, <? . 
Upper tail-coverts, dull crimson ; abdomen, spotted or barred 
with white = haematina ? . 
* Of the female. 
