698 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
PASSERIFORMES 
PITTIDAE Ant Thrushes 
Pitta angolensis pulih Fraser. West Coast Ant Thrush 
Pitta pulih Fraser, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1842, p. 190: Port Lokkoh, Sierra Leone. 
Size of a robin, 7.5 inches long, with very short tail and stout legs; above blackish, the tail- 
coverts bright blue; a broad brownish superciliary stripe; throat pinkish white, breast olive brown, 
abdomen pink; tip and base of bill orange-salmon, the middle black. Sierra Leone to Gold Coast. 
The ant thrush of Liberia and adjacent region is doubtless but a subspecies 
of typical P. angolensis and I have therefore ventured to regard it as such. The 
name is a native word, related to ‘“‘umpuhli” which according to Kemp (1905) 
means ‘‘a voluble talker” in the Tamane dialect of Sierra Leone. No doubt the 
bird is of fairly general distribution over much of the country, preferring dense 
thickets of undergrowth, but on account of its secretive habits it is seldom seen, 
though its notes may often be heard, coming from apparently near at hand, 
though one is seldom able to locate their maker. The natives snare them by 
putting small nooses in openings at intervals along the little barricade fences 
which they often run for hundreds of feet here and there in the forest. Butti- 
kofer obtained a few in this way, and kept two of them alive for several weeks, 
feeding them on the larvae of Termes. At Gbanga on September 15 two of a 
brood of young birds were brought in to us, and on the 21st, a brood of four that 
a native woman had caught while tending the rice-fields. Both lots were fairly 
well feathered, but still dependent on parental care. They kept up a soft plain- 
tive note, p2’-w, somewhat like a cat’s mew, and I heard a similar note on various 
occasions in the jungle. At Monrovia in mid-July we were shown an adult that 
was said to have been caught in the garden of one of the white residents. 
HIRUNDINIDAE Swallows 
Hirundo rustica rustica Linné. European Swallow 
Hirundo rustica Linné, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, vol. 1, p. 191, 1758: Sweden. 
Length 7 inches; above steely blue, the forked tail with a large white mark on inner webs of 
feathers; forehead and chin chestnut, belly white; a blue neck collar in the male. Breeds in north- 
ern Europe and Asia, winters in Africa and India. 
The Common Swallow is one of the few European land birds that occurs regu- 
larly in Liberia on migration or as a winter resident. We saw the first ones on 
September 26, when a small flock of four appeared at Gbanga coursing about 
over the village and the open ground about it. An adult male was shot, and we 
saw other flocks on later occasions, in the vicinity of open country. Biittikofer 
says that it arrives in great multitudes at the beginning of the dry season, that 
is in mid-November, when the white ants are swarming, and feeds eagerly upon 
them. He obtained specimens along the coast, at Robertport, Paynesville, 
and on the Mesurado River at various times between October 12 and April 4, 
when they were nearly in breeding dress. Lowe found them common at Nana 
Kru in January. 
