32



Dr. E. Hopkinson,



towns and in the rice fields and the swamps in flocks of hundreds,

and in smaller numbers throughout the bush. They nest in low

bushes in the most conspicuous and apparently dangerous situations,

making a typical Dove nest—a scanty collection of small sticks,

rootlets and grass most flimsily flung together. Although apparently

so reckless in their choice of nesting sites, this cannot, to judge from

their numbers, have ever had any harmful effect on the race as a

whole, and no doubt the fact that they usually select thorn bushes

(or, if not actually thorns, bushes situate in the midst of thorn

clumps) has been their saving. African thorn bush—“ Them bad

prickle places ” as the boys call them—is quite enough to stop idle

wanderers of all sorts, especially in the rains, when their armament

is hidden by leaves and long grass.


“ Jettero ” is the Mandingo name of this Dove. “ Pura,” the

name for all or any Doves, is often specifically used for this as being

the commonest, but “ Jettero ” is its proper distinctive name, and is

derived from its note, a trisyllabic “ coo,” which is supposed to

resemble the word “ Jettero.” My own boys go one better than this,

and say it is always sick and calling for medical assistance—

“ Doctor-oh, doctor-oh.” A white-man rendering of its call is

“ Better-go-home, better-go-home ”—a particularly annoying saluta¬

tion to sportsmen trudging campward after an outing chiefly note¬

worthy for a series of bad misses.


In general appearance and size these Doves resemble the

common cage-bird, the “ Barbary,” except that they are much

darker. Like it, they have the same black ring round the hinder

three-quarters of the neck, but, instead of the pale fawn of the cage-

bird, their general colour is dirt-brown above, fading into paler

buffy-brown below, until pure white is reached at the vent and under

tail-coverts. The crown, nape, throat and breast are suffused with

a delicate pale-vinous shade. The wings are brown, a slightly paler

shade of the back colour. The upper surface of the tail is grey, with

the terminal half inch or so of each feather white or whitish, except

the two central ones, which are dirt-brown like the wings and have

no white ends; the under surface is black, with broad white feather-

ends. The hill is black, the feet dull crimson, and the iris dark

brown. Length, 11 in. The young resemble the adult, except that-



