174 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
range of heavily wooded mountains, whose tops are shrouded 
in thick fog till mid-day, when it clears for a few hours. At 
7 a.m. I walked about four miles along and up this hillside to the 
Mission. Though I spent all the hours of daylight from 9 a.m. 
till 6 p.m. rambling about collecting, I got very little, as the 
weather was so overcast and raw. 
Of animals I saw none save a mouse, which left its nest of 
grass in a bush; this contained a little blind young one. I 
found two similar nests empty. Out of a good many birds 5 
nests examined, only two contained anything ; one of these was 
that of a sun-bird, slightly larger than an egg-cup and beautifully 
hung, as is their custom, to the drooping extremity of a branch ; 
it held two young. The other nest was a weaver finch’s, 
in structure like a wren’s, and built in a young fir about fifteen 
feet from the ground. As I looked into it, the sitting bird flew 
out, nearly striking me in the face ; its strong little beak was a 
brilliant red, and the owner of the beak no larger than a plum. 
There were a great number of sun- birds (Drepanorhynchus 
Reichenoivi) on the lower ground which are never seen at Nairobi. 
The general colour is a velvety black, with a very long and 
slender pointed tail of an old-gold colour, and a splash of the 
same showing on each closed wing. These clung to the stems of 
a plant bearing a circlet of red tube-like flowerlets, and, rapidly 
running round b dived their three-inch long curved beaks into 
these inflorescences and extracted the nectar. I should have men- 
tioned that the birds are about five inches long, and that the sun- 
birds or honey-suckers (as they are called locally) are very similar 
in appearance and habits to the humming-birds of America. 
June 27. — I was directed to a path which leads up the moun- 
tain, but as I failed to find it, I struck up through the forest, 
following game trails whenever possible, which often necessitated 
going on all fours through the undergrowth. After ascending 
500 feet, I fortunately came out on to the path, and it was as 
well, for shortly after I entered the mist or fog-belt, everything 
was dripping, including the atmosphere, for the fog was condens- 
ing and drops falling from it. The fog blew in wraiths about 
me ; at one moment I could see a hundred yards ahead, and the 
next scarcely ten. At one time I could see a hornbill sitting on 
the dead limb of a giant tree, probably blasted by lightning; 
