44 
Mr. G. L. Bates— Field-Notes on the 
But I have found undoubted eggs of the Ngas; never 
more than two in a nest. Measurements of seven such eggs 
vary but little, 20-22 mm. in length by 14-15 mm. in 
breadth. 
[Nine eggs are of a long, rather pointed oval shape, and 
possess a certain amount of gloss. They present three types 
of coloration, viz. : pure white ; pale bluish-green, finely and 
rather sparingly freckled all over with lilac-grey and umber- 
brown ; and pale pinkish-white, thickly freckled all over with 
light red and pale lavender-grey.—O.-G.] 
1359. Ploceus cucullatus. [Nga’a (pi. Bengal).] 
Hyphantornis cucullatus Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 348. 
These Weavers follow man in all his migrations in this 
country as inevitably as do rats and sparrows. No sooner is a 
clearing made and stakes set in the ground for a new village 
than “ Benga'a ” begin to build in the nearest tree. A 
plantain or a palm-tree is chosen by preference, as furnishing 
not only a site but material close to hand for the nests; but 
any kind of tree will do. The more populous the village and 
the greater the hubbub of village life, the better are the birds 
pleased, adding to the noise their own shrill chatter. This 
strange predilection for public and noisy places, so contrary 
to the instinct of most birds, is not hard to account for, since 
these birds thus incidentally obtain man’s protection against 
birds and beasts of prey. No place is so safe from hawdcs 
and snakes as the village street. Though boys kill a good 
many Bengal, especially at planting-time, when they pull 
up the young shoots of corn as soon as they appear above 
ground, in order to get the sprouting grain beneath, yet the 
number killed by man does not seem to affect the population 
of the colonies. Killing numbers of them will not frighten 
them away, and tearing down their nests only makes them 
build the more furiously. They have a perfect mania for 
building, and when not building new nests are all the time 
repairing the old ones. They often destroy palm-trees by 
stripping them bare of their leaves. 
One day I watched a boy pull down the BengaVs nests 
