45 
Birds of Southern Kamerun. 
from a palm-tree by means of a long bamboo ” (really it 
was a palm-stalk) with a loop on the end. I made the following 
note:— Cf Not an hour after the nests were torn down the 
birds were busy building again. A few old shells of nests 
the boy had left untouched, and the birds set to work to repair 
these. Both males and females were busy at it, though the 
latter worked so quietly that they were scarcely noticed at 
first. They seemed to find some difficulty in tearing off the 
tough leaves of the palm where the nests were, so, giving 
these up, they went to neighbouring plantations, where the 
leaves were much tenderer. One was seen to bring a ribbon 
of plantain-leaf nearly an inch wide, and enter an old nest 
with it. After the bird had been inside a few seconds, a 
loop of the ribbon was seen to emerge from the side of the 
nest. . . . The very beginning of a new nest was seen also. 
It consisted of a wreath of strips woven together between two 
separated palm-leaflets, with the rhachis of the frond for one 
side/’ Thus the birds began with the part of the nest thatw r as 
attached to the palm-frond, and from this circle they w r ould 
weave the body or sack of the nest on one side and the 
vestibule on the other.” This is doubtless the way in which 
the nests of all the larger Weavers are constructed. 
It is the males of the Nga’a that utter the incessant shrill 
chattering song, doing so usually while supporting themselves, 
partly by holding on with their feet and partly by fluttering 
the wings, at the entrance to the nest. 
Two eggs are found in a nest. They vary much in 
colour and markings, but, so far as I have yet seen, both 
eggs of the same nest are alike. Three eggs that I have 
saved, from three separate nests, shewing variations in 
markings and colour, agree remarkably in size, each measuring 
25 x 16 mm. 
[Three eggs are of elongate oval form and are very slightly 
glossed. They are of three types, viz. : pure white; bluish- 
green, sparingly marked all over with spots of umber-brown 
and blotches of lilac-grey, some of which are very pale; and 
lastly white, marked rather sparingly all over with small 
spots of dull maroon and pale grey.—O.-G.] 
