MOZAMBIQUE TERRITORY (III) 67 
by the male, but employed by the female, which probably owes its 
setting properties to the presence of the bird’s saliva, though in 
captivity the Great Indian Hornbill has been seen to use mainly 
its own excrement and regurgitated food for this purpose. The 
male feeds his mate by regurgitation, and a comical sight it is to 
see her face appear at the “window” when she hears him arrive. 
Some of these sitting hornbills have an exceedingly uncomfort- 
able time. Once, in rather thick savanna country, I found the 
nest of a smaller species, the Crowned Hornbill, by seeing the 
male flying to a hole which, surprisingly enough, was only about 
ten feet from the ground. The sealed part of the hole looked very 
much like the surrounding wood, and had set quite hard. The tree 
was situated in a hollow, and having very few branches the trunk 
caught the full heat of the sun. I chipped away the “plaster” and 
found the hole inside to be almost as hot as an oven. Reaching 
down I found the female about two feet below the hole. She 
nipped me, but without much vigor, and when I pulled her out 
she was obviously weak and looked the picture of misery. Once 
home, I put her in a roomy box in a cool place and kept her quiet. 
For a while she was unable to stand but gradually recovered, 
and in a week she looked a different bird. This accomplishment 
was due in no small measure to the untiring efforts of a pick- 
aninny whom I employed to hunt grasshoppers, beetles and their 
grubs, lizards and frogs, all of which were safely stowed away 
by this one bird. The rather small savanna-dwelling hornbills are 
mainly insectivorous, whereas most of their forest-dwelling 
cousins are chiefly fruit-eaters. 
One thing leads to another, and by watching the flight of the 
Trumpeter Hornbills I located a tree laden with fruit resembling 
wild plums. On examining the fallen fruits, I noticed that quite 
a few were partly eaten and obviously not by hornbills. There 
were plenty of small birds such as bulbuls and barbets that were 
probably partly responsible, but some fruits bore the distinct pat- 
tern of tooth marks. 
Immediately galagos came to mind. Here there were two 
species—the small Moholi Galago that lives largely on insects, and 
a much larger one, Garnett’s Galago, that subsists mainly on fruit. 
