56 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



pursuit of ticks, is the beautiful little egret, one of 

 the most striking of the heron family. 



It is always an intense pleasure to the sojourner 

 in the far-distant African veldt to see about him 

 some bird with which he has been familiar at home. 

 The habits of migratory birds have been by no 

 means clearly established down to the present — I 

 mean their nidification in the various countries they 

 visit, their halting places and periods, and other 

 details of their strange existence. But that certain 

 birds do migrate from the extreme south of Africa 

 to Northern Europe and thence back again has long 

 been well known. The English wanderer in the 

 interior of South Africa, then, may expect to be 

 occasionally cheered by the sight of such familiar 

 home friends as the cuckoo, the chimney-swallow, 

 the sedge warbler and the willow warbler, the spotted 

 flycatcher, the waterhen, little grebe, and eared grebe, 

 as well as the grey plover, turnstone, little stint, san- 

 derling, redshank, curlew, and others of the Scolo- 

 pacidce. Probably also that very beautiful and 

 remarkable wader, the avocet (Bccurmrostra avo- 

 cetta)^ with its slender, long, upturned bill, and the 

 stilt or stilt-plover (Himantopus candidits), the ruff 

 {Machetes pugnax), one or two of the herons, the 

 white stork, and some of the plovers, besides those I 

 have mentioned, pass systematically between South 

 Africa and Europe. 



