A SHRIKE (_LANIUS CAUDATUS_, Cab.) ON THE LOOK-OUT FROM THE HIGH BOUGHS OF AN ACACIA. ITS CRIES WHEN IT SEES A HUNTER ON THE MOVE OFTEN WARN THE ANIMALS HE IS STALKING.]
High over my head the voice of the pretty avocet (_Recurvirostra avocetta_, L.), one of the most charming forms of the bird world known to us, transports me by magic to the distant and mournful lakes of the Masailand wilderness. What the dwarf bustards (_Otis gindiana_, Oust.) keep calling out to each other with their continually repeated “Rágga-ga-rágga” is not to be discovered. But their cry, which has kept the fancy of the natives busy since olden days, is as inseparably associated with regions on which the grass grows high, as the voices and cries of the sandfowl, the francolins, and, above all, the jarring outcries of the guinea-fowl, on the velt. All the manifold voices of doves, cuckoos, parrots, hornbills, bee-eaters, shrikes, orioles, starlings, finches, weaver-birds, sylvians, and the rest, calling, exulting, rejoicing, uttering cries of alarm or complaint, have woven themselves into my recollections of happy days and days of toil.
Thus there still rings in my ear the triple note of the yellowish green bulbul (_Pycnonotus layardi_, Gurn.), which, like our sparrow, is present everywhere, till one almost tires of it. Most curious is the friendly play which the handsomely coloured glossy starling (_Spreo superbus_, Rüpp.) carries on with a weaver-bird (_Dinemellia dinemelli_, [Hartl.] Rüpp) in flights like those of our sparrows. It comes back to me all the more vividly when I recall the notes uttered by these two birds, which, though such close friends and taking such delight in each other’s company, are so distantly related. The curious warbling of the honey-finder (_Indicator indicator_, Gm.), which often guides the man who follows it to a wild bees’ nest, also easily makes a permanent impression on the ear of the traveller.
And there are many other bird-voices that delight any one who takes pleasure in sound. When silvery moonbeams streamed over the camp, the night-jars (especially _Caprimulgus fossei_ [Verr.] Hartl.) buzzed and hummed forth their strange song everywhere around. No matter how remote and desolate the wilderness in which the traveller laid down his head to rest, these goat-suckers were to be heard. Their voice makes a strong impression on us even in our own country in the lonely woods, but its effect is much more striking, on the far-off equatorial velt. With noiseless soft beating of its wings the bird comes gliding past us; its wings almost touch us. When it pours forth its song, its monotonous sleepy song, I could listen to it for hours. In the daytime it starts up suddenly from the ground here and there in front of you, uttering the feeblest of cries, that it is impossible to represent. In the next instant it vanishes like some huge moth, and even the sharpest eye cannot distinguish it amongst the dry branches and leaves, or clinging close to the rocky ground. The song of the night-jar is among my most vivid recollections of the bird-voices of Africa.