334 
ON SAFARI 
Athi Bush-Lark— M. athi. This frequents more open country 
than the last, including the open grassy plains, where I 
found a nest containing a single young bird on quite bare 
ground on February 4, the owner showing rufous-brown 
wings as she rose (p. 214). We also found it nesting at 
Elmenteita in September. 
Large Buntings with bright yellow breasts, and various 
Serin-like birds, are conspicuous, the latter specially numerous at 
Elmenteita and Nakuru. 1 
Weaver-Birds 
Africa counts some 250 species, 
divided into 62 genera, all more or less 
related to the Finches. 
Over the whole country one sees 
their nests ; often every branch of a tree 
will be bent down with scores of pendent 
grass-built structures, separate or semi¬ 
detached. Favourite sites are palmites 
and forest-trees that fringe river-banks, 
the lower nests almost dipping to the 
surface as branches sway in a breeze. 
Even lowly bushes, where they overhang 
water, are occupied. The eggs, like the 
birds, are sparrow-like. At Baringo, 
nests contained both eggs and young in August. 
The Social Weavers (. Philteterus ) build nests which can only 
be described as confluent, joined together by the hundred under 
a common roof—see sketch at p. 58. Republicaines the French 
happily term these little architects. Another group (. Ryjphan - 
tornis ) weave their nests separately on to tall reeds growing in 
water, as shown at p. 250. Other forms are figured at p. 67. 
Weaver-birds of one genus or another nested alike at 
Mombasa and in every wooded region that we visited—up to 
the Sotik. 
At Mombasa one of the common species is Bojer’s Golden 
1 These, I find, are Canaries, of which genus some twenty-five to thirty 
species are recognised in Africa. 
A WEAVER. 
