THE BIRDS OF LIBERIA 741 
feet. The old birds appeared momentarily at the calls of one of the young, 
but were wary and quickly disappeared after a brief show of anxiety. In this 
juvenal plumage the young bird is dull blackish all over, except that the back 
is slightly grayish. The roof of the mouth is whitish with five black spots: 
a median large one back of the tip of the beak, then a pair of similar large ones, 
and farther back a pair of small ones. At the angle of the mouth are on each 
mandible two small white bead-like papillae, on each side, giving the effect 
of small seeds projecting from the beak. On October 27, a male was collected 
at Moylakwelli the stomach of which contained caterpillars and fibrous vege- 
table matter. 
Nigrita bicolor bicolor (Hartlaub). Chestnut-bellied Weaver 
Pytelia bicolor Hartlaub, Syst. Verz. Bremen, 1844, p. 76: Gold Coast. 
Like the preceding species, but the black areas are chestnut, except the tail which is black. 
Female slightly smaller. Senegambia to Gold Coast. 
This is distinctly a bird of the forest undergrowth, and like its congener 
is solitary in habit. We saw but three or four in all, while Bittikofer speaks 
of it at Fisherman Lake, Jarjee, Mt. Olive, and adds that Stampfli shot one 
in the graveyard at Monrovia. Lowe found a nest with three white eggs at 
Nana Kru, January 20, 1911, in a small bush three feet from the ground; ‘‘the 
nest was entirely surrounded by red ants, which did not in the least appear 
to disturb the occupant.”’ Oberholser has recorded it from Mount Coffee. 
Spermospiza haematina leonina Neumann 
Spermospiza haematina leonina Neumann, Journ. f. Orn., vol. 58, p. 523, 1910: Bo, Sierra Leone. 
Length 5.5 inches; male black everywhere except for the scarlet chin, throat, upper breast, and 
sides of body; bill very heavy, blue with red tip; eyelids white. Female, similar but duller, head 
and upper tail-coverts tinged with red, the belly and under tail-coverts with many small white 
spots. West Africa, Senegambia to the Niger. 
This handsome black and scarlet weaver is a bird of swampy ground or 
bushy growth along streams, coming also into rice-fields to feed on the seeds. 
It is, however, exceedingly wary and in spite of its conspicuous coloring is so 
secretive that it is very hard to see. Of the seven specimens we secured, all 
but two were brought in by the natives, who seem able to snare the species 
easily along the edges of their fields or by the bordering streams. At Gbanga 
Whitman and I found a pair building a nest on September 22. The birds were 
bringing material to a spot in the dense top of a large tree that had been felled 
at the edge of a shaded pool and lay partly in the water. We watched them 
come and go a few times but they were very shy and showed themselves for 
a few seconds only. Two days later after a long wait I saw one of them in the 
early forenoon as it approached the nest, but although I was partly hidden 
and a number of yards away, it saw me at once and withdrew. Later, on 
searching the thinly wooded edges of this little pool, I started the pair to- 
gether from some thick bushes but they disappeared at once into a thicket. 
On the 25th both birds were collected. The nest was about finished and con- 
