Notes on a small collection of birds from Panda, Matenga, N.E. Bechuanaland

Abstract

At the beginning of November, 1953, I visited the Colonial Development Corporation's cattle ranch at Panda Matenga on the Bechuanaland/Southern Rhodesia border, 40 mile" south of the Victoria Falls. The main ranch buildings are on the "Old Hunter's Road". Small bird collections were made last century by Oates and Holub when travelling on this road but the only recent collecting in north-eastern Bechuanaland was by the 1930 Vernay-Lang Kalahari expedition (in the dry season) and Roberts (1932) described a number of new forms from their skins. One of the main objects of my collection was to ascertain the eastern limit" of the ranges of some of these forms and to obtain "one of the same birds in the wet season, particularly the Cisticolas, which have a distinctive breeding and non-breeding dress.