BIRDS COLLECTED IN THE BELGIAN CONGO 763 
The male from Kamaniola is in full breeding plumage except that the long, 
innermost secondary is brownish. The female from Bumba is exceptionally 
small as compared with the one from Kwamouth and with a long series in the 
Museum of Comparative Zoédlogy, having a wing length of only 51 as against 
63.5 mm., tail 40 as against 53 mm., culmen from base of 8 as against 8.5 mm. 
in the Kwamouth bird. 
Both females and males in non-breeding plumage vary in the width of the 
black head stripes. In some, the two stripes meet just before the base of the 
maxilla forming a narrow black forehead while others have a median V of brown 
coming down to the very base of the maxilla. 
The three males from Kwamouth are in the early stages of the prenuptial 
molt. 
Coliuspasser concolor concolor (Cassin) 
Vidua concolor Cassin, Proc. Phil. Acad., 1848, p. 66: Sierra Leone. 
Male, Nya Gezi, 3 February 1927. 
This specimen is in fresh breeding plumage. The long rectrices are little 
more than half grown (138 mm. long) and the remiges, their greater and middle 
coverts, and especially the under tail-coverts are conspicuously margined with 
light pale buff. A male from Tandala, Tanganyika Territory,! (M.C.Z. 65347) 
has a slight reddish brown throat collar, approaching in this respect Coliwspasser 
concolor ardens, but much darker and less well defined. In this connection it is 
interesting to note that Reichenow (Vogel Afrikas, iil, 1904, p. 135) notes that 
specimens from Tandala (of which the M.C.Z. bird is one, received in exchange 
from the Berlin Museum) have this character. He does not say how many 
specimens he had from Tandala, but it is unlikely that he would have exchanged 
the only one with a reddish collar, and the only likely interpretation of his words 
is that his series of Tandala birds have this character. In a series of four breed- 
ing males from Liberia there is no trace of this collar. In view of the fact that 
concolor and ardens are so closely related it is decidedly interesting to find an 
intergrade in which the collar has remained in a likewise intermediate stage. 
C. c. concolor is chiefly a West African bird ranging eastward to Lake Nyasa 
and Lake Albert, while C. c. ardens is a bird of southern and eastern Africa. 
This intermediate bird comes from near the easternmost limit of the range of 
concolor and the western edge of that of ardens. Schuster (Journ. f. Orn., 1926, 
pp. 725-726) writes that in the high grasslands of Uhehe near Iringa, he found 
both C. concolor and C. ardens together in swarms, and that hybrids occur as 
might be expected when birds live in flocks. However, he states definitely that 
C. ardens assumes nuptial plumage before C. concolor, which would indicate a 
possible differential breeding time. I am, therefore, not wholly convinced that 
the Tandala birds are hybrids and not erythristic phases. Shelley (Birds of 
Africa, iv, p. 44) definitely considered them hybrids. Bannerman (Rey. Zool. 
Afr., vii, 1920, p. 286) in commenting on Ogilvie-Grant’s opinion (Trans. Zool. 
1 Tandala is due north of the northern end of Lake Nyasa, between the lake and the southwestern 
tip of the Uhehe country. 
