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here ; it is usuall}' seen singly or in pairs looking for 

 food on the ground and strutting about with a very 

 ,starling-like gait, or perched on a tree or tall bush, 

 where its beautiful crest and elegant shape show to 

 the best advantage. Much more common however is 

 one of the IrrisorincE, Irrisor erythrothynchics, the Red- 

 billed Wood-Hoopoe, a black bird Vv^ith white wing- 

 marks, a fan-shaped tail and a long curved red bill. 

 This bird, which the natives call by a name which 

 means " Stinking bird,"* is found nearly everywhere, 

 where there are trees or bush, among which noisy 

 chattering parties flit slowly about with rather feeble 

 flight and hesitating wings, searching the branches 

 for insects, tapping and pecking the bark, like Wood- 

 peckers, with their long bills, and climbing about the 

 trunks and boughs like overgrown Tree - Creepers. 

 Even in the breeding season, in the early part of the 

 rains (July), one still sees these birds in parties as at 

 other times, as they breed in company in holes in 

 trees. In one tree, from which two down-covered 

 young were brought to me, there were three other 

 nests of these birds, all in holes in the main trunk, 

 the lowest at least twenty feet from the ground. One 

 of the holes had two months before been occupied by 

 a pair of Hornbills as a nesting-site, and was about 

 eighteen inches deep, and had an opening which 

 easily admitted a hand and arm ; but the others were 

 much more protected, the entrance-hole being only 

 big enough to admit the parents, that is, about two 

 inches in diameter. I rather expected, (from what I 

 had read about their nesting - habits), to find the 

 exterior of the nest extremely foul from the accumu- 

 lation of excrement and food-refuse, but this was by 



* These birds have a most peculiar mousey smell during life or when 

 recently shot, but it is not to this they owe their name, as this smell 

 apparently the natives do not perceive, but they say that when cooked the 

 fles-h is so foul-smelling that even the Jolas, our most omnivorous native 

 race, cannot eat it: hence the nam.e.— K.H. 



