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PERCHING BIRDS. 
of the American robin or migratory thrush, lurking about the robin’s vicinity 
until the parents are away, and then pouncing on the nest, seizing an egg or 
young one, and hastily retreating. The adult male is black above and below, 
variously glossed with green, purple, blue violet and bronze; the female is 
similar but her tints are more subdued. 
* The Weaver-Birds. 
Family PloceiDjE. 
NEST OP SOCIABLE WEAVERS. 
The weaver - birds, which derive their 
name from the extraordinary textile nests they 
construct, comprise a large group of birds 
very abundant in Africa, and represented by 
many genera in South - Eastern Asia and 
Australia. While very similar to the finches 
in external appearance, they differ in having 
ten primary quills in the wings, and likewise 
in some of them undergoing a partial moult in 
the spring. Resembling the hangnests to a 
certain extent in the structure of their nests, 
they differ both from those birds and the 
starlings in having no backward prolongation 
of the hinder extremity of the lower mandible. 
Having a strong conical beak, with the culmen projecting on to the forehead and 
arched at the tip, they have the nostrils pierced within the line of the forehead or 
close to it, while the space between the nostril and the edge of the mandible is 
