Birds of Gazahmd. 405 



wliile I was absent in the lowlands, Odendaal sawed down 

 a large Maba in Chirinda and took from it uninjured four 

 unfledged young o£ this species. One of them had evidently- 

 been hatched long after the others, being half their size and 

 very backward in appearance. The nest was about twenty- 

 five feet from the ground in the hollow trunk (there 

 nearly four feet in diameter) and was entered by a slit so 

 narrow that it was difficult to believe the female could 

 squeeze in. This had been mudded up with a mixture 

 of the red ^' Jihu " earth of the forest and the bird''s own 

 droppings, containing seeds of figs^ &o. The barricade had 

 already been broken down by the birds themselves when the 

 nest was disco vered^ but I myself saw what remained of 

 it on my return. Another slit, higher in the tree^ had 

 evidently been also used as a nest the year before, and the 

 brick-red colour of its edges still bore evidence of its having 

 been mudded up. The young birds throve well on bananas 

 and papaws, and for sheer voracity I think that they easily 

 bore off the palm from all other bird-families that I have 

 ever reared. Their cries, when anyone entered the room, 

 and particularly when they were receiving food, were truly 

 appalling, resembling at a short distance nothing so much 

 as the squealing of a pig in agony. As they put on feathers 

 and grew stronger, they would hustle each other, and worry 

 each other with their bills (the weakling generally ending 

 by receiving the unwelcome though harmless attention of 

 all the others at once), while, in their eagerness for the food, 

 they would jump up on to the side of their basket or on to 

 my hand and shoulder, all the time uttering deafening 

 cries. Like my adult Zambesi Trumpeter, they would take 

 the food with the point of the bill and toss it into the 

 gullet by one or more backward jerks of the head. They 

 are evidently a long time in arriving at maturity, for the 

 three elder nestlings, judging by the subsequent slow 

 progress of the fourth, must have already been several 

 weeks old when taken, though still callow. They sub- 

 sequently put on feathers very slowly, being anything but 

 respectable at the time of their death after three months^ 



