120 BULLETIN 2 08, UNITED STATES NATIONAL JVIUSEUM 



knocking sticks together, whacking on trees, whistling, and giving 

 gutteral aaagh-ah! grunts, the usual procedure used in "calling" 

 honey-guides. After some 10 or 15 minutes of this my Zulu said, "It 

 answers now," and I could hear a far|away churrr cAwrrr repeated 

 rapidly. We could not see the bird until it flew towards us, but the 

 tree from which we first saw it come was about 150-200 feet away. 

 At other times when out "calling" for honey-guides, the answering 

 bird would give its chattering call but would not come to us, merely 

 waiting for us to come to it, and on one of these occasions I estimated 

 the distance, by counting the paces, at about 250 feet. 



Some idea of the noise and the persistency of the call made by a 

 honey-guide attempting to "interest" a native or a safari to follow it 

 may be gathered from the numerous big-game hunters who have gone 

 on record with comments, suggestive of exasperation, to the effect 

 that the birds were great nuisances to themlwhen"" stalking game. 

 Apparently the large animals were often alerted by the actions of the 

 bird, and made off without allowing the hunter to get within strildng 

 distance. There is no reason to assume that the guiding chatter of 

 the Indicator conveys any specific connotation of human followers to 

 the big game, but merely a general awareness of something strange 

 nearby or something to be avoided. 



A vocalism connected apparently with the end of a guiding tour is 

 described by Kermit Koosevelt (in T. Roosevelt, 1910, pp. 338-339). 

 After the natives had opened and left a bees' nest, the honey-guide 

 which had led them to it flew straight to the still smoking opening, "ut- 

 tering a long trill, utterly different from the chattering noise made 

 while trying to attract the attention of the men and lead them to 

 the tree." -Although I have waited in the vicinity of such opened 

 hives and have seen the bu'ds come down to feed, I never heard any 

 sound from them at such times. 



In the present stage of our knowledge it is not safe or even possible 

 to attempt to "read into" the data too much significance, but it may 

 be pointed out, merely as a suggestion, that the churring call of the 

 nestling honey-guide is not dissimilar to the guiding chatter that the 

 bird gives later in life. This at least raises the question as to a possible 

 common significance for the two types of vocalisms; both are con- 

 nected with food-getting, the nestling call being given to the food- 

 bearing foster parent, the guiding chatter to the "accomplice" in 

 rendering available the food in the bees' nests. The call of the nestling 

 is said to be kept up incessantly, almost as if it were the natural accom- 

 paniment of respiration. The guiding chatter is similarly continuous 

 during the invervals between flights in a guiding tour — i. e., when the 

 bird is waiting for the advent of its food-getting helper. 



