24 Mr. D. F. Gilfillan on some 



rank flavour from tLis £00 ', as is the case with some of the 

 Bustards. I presume that the vegetable diet of these birds 

 corrects the tendency of this food to make the flesh rank. 

 Tiiey nest in the spring, from September to December as a 

 rule, but sometimes as late as March and April. The time 

 of nesting very much depends upon the rains. 



They are noisy birds, having a clear ringing call, generally 

 to be heard at sunrise an 1 sunset, particularly when there is 

 a change of weather coming. The sound of their note, 

 coupled with the scent of the Karroo bushes, always carries 

 my thoughts buck to the happy days when care was almost 

 unknown and holidays, which were frequent, were spent in 

 the country with gun or catapult. There was for many 

 years, and no doubt is still generally to be found, a small 

 covey of birds near the homestead on the farm " Conway," 

 Middelburg District, Cape Colony, which is never allowed 

 to be molested. The members of this covey were frequently 

 to be seen sitting in a row on a stone wall near the home- 

 stead, calling most vigorously for an hour or more, and 

 whenever this ha})pened it generally meant either rain or a 

 change in the weather of some sort. I have seen coveys on 

 the same farm call vigorously at dusk and then fly quietly 

 and settle for the night some four or five hundred yards 

 away. My conclusion as to the reason for the action was 

 that it was done to put jackals and other prowling animals 

 off their scent. I have not noticed the practice anywhere 

 else, but my brother, who owns Conway, states that it is not 

 uncommon on his furm. On one occasion also, when I was 

 shooting in the Barberton District in 1891 on a dull quiet 

 day, I saw a covey of birds fly up from an open grassy 

 spot some two hundred yards from where I was riding, and 

 settle in a donga about a mile away from the place they had 

 flown from. I turned my horse in that direction to hunt 

 them up and had just started off when a heavy shower of 

 hail commenced falling. I with my horse had to take shelter 

 in the same donga beneath some thick-foliaged trees, and 

 the hail was so severe that it stripped the leaves off the trees 



