Many bird books indicate that female Southern Masked-Weavers have brown eyes, but this is incorrect. In an analysis of my own ringing data, I found that 29% of 103 females with brood patches had a red or reddish eye, while it was brown in the rest of the breeding females (Oschadleus 2011). Females do seem to have brown eyes in winter. Of 59 confirmed females (i.e. handled with brood patch in summer, and retrapped in winter), less than 1% had a reddish eye in the nonbreeding season.