THE BIRDS OF LIBERIA 739 
on her again leaving for more material, he would accompany her a short dis- 
tance. Once I saw a male fly down to the ground, pick up a bit of loose material, 
fly with it to the nest-hole, into which he carried it, presently popping out 
again; but the females seemed to do most of the building. From Kakatown 
inland, these little mannikins were present about almost every large native 
village, but were noticeable for their absence from one or two deserted towns, 
whose tumbledown roofs might nevertheless have been available as nesting 
sites. Evidently the birds prefer the close association with natives and their 
domestic life. Fledglings were found at Gbanga in early September, and birds 
in the first-winter plumage by the 27th of that month. Notwithstanding 
their strong liking for thatched roofs as building sites, they sometimes revert 
to their primitive habit of nesting in trees. The only place where we observed 
this was at Medina, where on October 30, we saw a little colony building nests 
in a small tree beside a native house in the center of the village. Some of the 
birds were even taking nesting material from the roof of the adjacent hut. 
There were at least three nests, placed close together on the branches where 
several small twigs came off, instead of being pensile, like the nests of so many 
of this group. These nests were bulky, built of grasses and pieces of thatch 
(palm leaf), and had the entrance at the side in the upper part. Both birds 
of the pair were seen coming with building material. A female collected here 
would have laid eggs within a few days so probably more than one brood is 
raised a year. In Sierra Leone, both Kemp (1905) and Thompson (1925) 
speak of this bird as nesting commonly in trees or small bushes or banana 
trees; once, indeed, a nest was found in a disused Palm Weaver’s (Plesiositagra 
cucullatus) nest. 
At night the birds resort to their nest-holes in the thatched roofs to sleep, 
going in one by one, either into separate holes or sometimes a number will 
sleep in the same one, for Kemp remarks that during the rains they roost in 
their nests, which may be packed with five or six birds. At dawn old and young 
set forth in small companies to feed in the rice-fields. They will also fly up 
into the air from a perch on the roof to catch passing insects, and once during 
a heavy downpour in late August, we saw them flying up and catching the 
raindrops for drink. More than once we saw the White-necked Crows search- 
ing about on the thatched roofs of native villages, probably looking for the 
young or eggs of these little birds. 
In the juvenal plumage the head, back and wings are uniform dark olive 
brown, tail blackish; throat like the back, flanks light olive brown, belly washed 
with ochraceous buff. 
Lepidopygia bicolor (Fraser). Black-and-white Waxbill 
Amadina bicolor Fraser, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, p. 145, 1842: Cape Palmas. 
Size of the preceding or larger, 4 inches; head and entire upper parts, throat, and upper 
breast black with slight greenish reflections; flanks barred black and white; lower breast, belly, 
and under tail-coverts white; bill whitish. Female with minute white spots on outer secondaries; 
bill pale bluish. Portuguese Guinea to Niger. 
