36 
Mr. G. L. Bates— Field-Notes on the 
trees, in exactly the same manner as the species I had collected 
at Efulen, and uttering the same calls. 
1203. Lanius mackinnoni. [Asanze, or Asese.] 
Fiscus mackinnoni Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 328. 
I have a little to add to my note in f The Ibis 5 about this 
bird. Once in a cassava-patch, on a thorn-like twig of some 
dead bush, I found a partly eaten body of a young bird 
impaled. That I lay this crime at the door of the Asanze 
is only because I know that its relatives in other lands are 
“ butcher-birds.” But against the evil which I only suspect, 
I hasten to tell the good that I know of this bird. For, though 
usually silent and morose, when the right mood comes it is 
a sweet singer. Its notes are slow and scattering, but varied 
and sweet, and it introduces clever imitations of other birds. 
I have thus noted hearing the querulous cry of the Coly 
and the call of Pycnonotus gabonensis mimicked perfectly by 
this Shrike. Once, while an Asanze was watched singing, its 
mate was seen to come and perch close beside it, while the 
singer continued his song. 
1235. Dicrurus atripennis. [Ebondi, or Fa-Beti.] 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 354. 
This is the common forest-Drongo in all localities. In my 
account of the ejak , or company of little birds wandering 
and feeding together in the forest ( 4 The Ibis/ 1905, p. 462), 
1 named this as nearly always the most conspicuous bird of 
the ejak. On reading, in Mr. Swynnertom’s first paper on 
the Birds of Gazaland, of “ the habit of this species [ Dicrurus 
afer\ of assuming the leadership of the flocks of small birds 
so often met with 99 (‘ The Ibis/ 1907, p. 72), it struck me that 
my “ ejak 39 was something similar to what was mentioned 
there. It never occurred to me that the Dicrurus here in 
Kamerun was the leader of the ejak in any other sense than 
being the noisiest bird in it, the continual calling of which 
served to keep the company together, just as the gruff 
barking of a “ father 99 monkey keeps a troop of monkeys 
together among the tree-tops. 
