The Oologists' Record, March i, 192 1. 



this road and the ocean is a strip of wild uninhabited scrub, the 

 northern extremity of which is the part I know. We turn off from 

 the ferry-landing away from the road by a native path which leads 

 along the coral cliffs eastward through cocoanut plantations and 

 plots of cassava and sweet potatoes with a good deal of long grass 

 and jungly shrubs. There is nothing special to detain us, but we 

 may note as we go drongos, a couple of weavers. Bush-shrikes 

 (Tschagra) and maybe a Roller, Coracias caudalus (L.). In half 

 a mile we are clear of the huts and cultivation, and passing through 

 a belt of seven-foot-high grass we turn southwards, rise perhaps 

 fifty feet in a quarter of a mile, and find ourselves in the " good 

 country." Who else but a bird enthusiast would so describe it is 

 another matter. We are on a sort of low tableland, where a high 

 but light growth of ripening grass (it is August and the big rains are 

 just over) conceals the ever-present " coral rag " just enough to let 

 one stub a foot every five yards. Look back northwards and 

 beyond the belt of jungle-grass below us the ground falls rapidly 

 to the coral cliffs skirting the Kilindini arm ; across the narrow blue 

 seaway the mansions of New Mombasa gleam white under the bluest 

 of tropic skies, and again beyond them the flag of the Sultan of 

 Zanzibar floats in the light south-east wind over the old fort built 

 by the Portuguese, foes of his ancestors. Eastwards, it is a bare 

 mile to the ocean beach and the breakers of the Indian Ocean. 

 In the opposite direction one gets, after about a mile, to less interest- 

 ing country, a richer soil with dense growth of palms, closely culti- 

 vated. To the south — but who knows how far this delectable 

 plateau, with its dozens of varieties of thorn trees and evergreen 

 bushes, scattered here in singles, there in clumps, may extend. 

 Never does the scrub form an impenetrable wall. Go up a narrowing 

 glade which seems a cul-de-sac, there is always a little break at the 

 end which leads to the real glade. For me, wrapt in the fascinations 

 of the oological chase, the westering sun has always warned me that 

 it was time to retrace my steps long before I had done more than 

 penetrate the fringe of these happy hunting grounds. Surely all 

 you who read can imagine, if you do not know it, the really likely 

 looking thorn-bush, just fifty yards ahead, and then, even if that 

 one does draw blank, the still better one a little further on ; and 

 the ten minutes one allows oneself to watch this or that and lo ! 

 it is 5.30, and we can only get back to the island ferry before dark if 

 there are no distractions on the way, and how disappointing if no 



