230 
Hybrid Wydahs- 
whicli you published as being the second successful record of 
their breeding in this country, the first breeder having been Mrs. 
Anningson, some years previously. 
It has now been proved that niy hen was not a Red-collared 
Whydah. As stated in my article mentioned above, I bought 
the hen as a female Crimson-crowned Weaver, but I have since 
had a hen of this species, and there is a marked difference 
between the two birds. Last season her first young one came 
into colour, and 1 thought at first that although it had no red 
collar, it was still a pure bred P. ardcns, as I understand that 
pure black males are occasionally found in the Gambia. How- 
ever, it developed, later on, a yellow mantle, and when in full 
colour exactly resembled the plate of the Vellow-backed 
Whydah (P. luacnira) in Butler's Porcigii Pinches in Captivity. 
This handsome hybrid was unfortunately killed, and I 
then sent its body to ^Ir. Chubb at the British Museum, and he 
gave it as his opinion that it was a hybrid between P. ardcns and 
P. niacrura- 
The next season the hen successfully nested again, and I 
sent you an account, tvhich you pubhshed in October, 1916, 
under the heading of The Breeding of a hybrid Criniso)!- 
crowned Weaver and Red-collared Whydah. 
This record is of course also a wrong one. The father 
in this case appears to have been the Red-shouldered Whydah, 
which bird the young one, now that it has come into colour, 
very closely resembles. Its shoulders are, however, primrose 
yellow instead of red, and its tail is rather longer. It has no 
yellow on the back, which one would expect it to have if its 
mother had been a true Yellow-backed Whydah. The question 
is, if not a macrnra, what can the hen have been ? One also 
wonders whether the birds bred by Mrs. Anningson were pure 
bred. Possibly they did not live the two years, and so come 
into colour. 
