260 
Annals of the Transvaal Museum. 
and left a white egg on the ground ; the measurements given of this egg 
agree with those of the species taken from various birds’ nests and now in 
the collection of the Transvaal Museum. Some importance may be attached 
to the last incident, since Cuckoos are known to lay their eggs on the 
ground and subsequently to carry them in their beaks to the nest in 
which they are to be deposited in the absence of the parents. 
In a recent paper on “ Egg-collecting, in the Bushveld,” in the 
Journal of the South African Ornithologists' Union, Yol. IX, p. 36, I 
mentioned some cases which seemed to indicate that Rendall’s Seedeater 
(Anomalospiza imberhis) might also be parasitic. I have just obtained 
proof that my supposition was correct. On Sunday last (24th January, 
1916), I searched for a nest of a pair of Black-chested Wren Warblers 
( Prinia flavicans), which had been observed for some days to be very busy 
carrying grubs and insects to a nest somewhere in my garden. The nest 
was discovered and to my delight was found to contain a young RendalTs 
Seedeater. During the day I showed the nest and bird to quite a number 
of friends and relations, but for fear of scaring the birds too much, we did 
not do more than peep carefully into it ; the young bird filled the whole 
of the bottom of the woven nest, and this accounts for overlooking the 
presence of a young warbler as well, which must have been hidden under 
it, of which more anon. On the following morning a telegram was 
dispatched to my brother at Johannesburg, to come over as soon as possible 
with his apparatus to photograph the birds ; this he was unable to do 
until late on Wednesday afternoon (26th), and to my dismay on Wednesday 
morning I discovered that the young had left the nest. 1 spent about an 
hour in trying to find them and was at last rewarded, after watching the 
movements of the old birds, by flushing first a young Prinia, which I 
guessed must have been hidden under the parasite, and I did not therefore 
follow it, and then, not a yard farther on, the young parasite. Both birds 
were then caught and put into an extemporized cage, and the old birds 
were soon seen to feed them. In the afternoon my brother arrived and 
the young birds were transferred to a canary cage, which was put close 
to a disguised tent in which my brother took up a post with the camera. The 
young Wren Warbler managed to wriggle through the bars of the cage 
and to fly away repeatedly at first, but was always caught and put back 
again, until at the last it was so blown by its exertions that it remained 
quietly on the bottom of the cage, as shown in the photographs ; just 
after the last plate had been used, it hopped on to the perch alongside the 
parasite. The Seedeater proved to be more amenable to handling and 
soon settled on a perch where it could easily take food through the bars 
from its foster parents, and a number of fairly good photographs were taken ; 
but light was rapidly failing and the last was taken just before sunset. 
Its demands for food were incessant when all was quiet after I had retired, 
and the foster parents fed it on an average of about once a minute. Next 
day was clear and scorchingly hot ; but undismayed by the discomfort 
of having to sit in the sweltering heat of the tiny tent, my brother remained 
at his post nearly all the morning and secured an excellent set of photo- 
graphs, on which he is to be congratulated. The Seedeater seemed to 
be so tame that we decided to take no more photographs of it in the cage, 
