63 
Birds of Southern Kamerun . 
place. The stomach-contents consist mainly of insects, 
including spiders. These and other Sunbirds do often hover 
on the wing before flowers, like Humming-birds, but only 
for a few moments at a time. 
The beautiful velvety dark brown of tbe males of this 
species becomes much faded, or bleached, when the plumage 
is worn, so that in the moult the new feathers are much 
darker than the old. 
1866. Anabathmjjs reichenbachi. [Zesol.] 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 340. 
Of this little S unbird only two adults and one young 
specimen were obtained, all at the Ja. The last adult and 
the young one were caught, along with a Cinnyris cliloro- 
pygius, by a boy, at evening, at their roosting-place among 
tall weeds near a village. 
Both the adult specimens were females and are wrongly 
marked “ Bi* 1 Dr* Sharpe's paper. This fact is remarkable, 
because they have the bright colours usually possessed by 
the males alone among the Sunbirds, including the yellow 
pectoral tufts. I was surprised at the time of skinning to see 
that they were females, and so looked carefully to be sure 
that there was no mistake. In both cases the ovaries 
shewed small ova. When I examined the second specimen 
and found it a female, I put the body in spirit and sent it 
to the Museum; but it seems not to have arrived there. 
Lately I have found in Beichenow’s f Vogel Afrikas' (iii. 
p. 468) the statement, under this species, that “ the female 
is like the male in colour.” 
1874. Cinnyris superbus (Shaw). [Qdima-ZesoL] 
Sharpe, Ibis, 1908, p. 338. 
This, the most richly dressed and largest of our Sunbirds, 
makes its appearance, rather infrequently, about flowering 
shrubs and trees, and most often about the great opening 
buds of staminate flowers at the end of a young bunch of 
plantains or bananas. It frequently perches for a moment 
on the plantain-bunch, but when thrusting its bill among 
the flowers it often hovers on the wing as well. Though this 
