PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA (SOUTH) QI 
to my prize, too delighted to be worried by the fact that the 
whole affair would cost me hours of patient toil repairing and 
resetting the nets. 
When on these excursions, I often used to hear the distinctive 
call of the Black Crake. This is a delightful bird with red legs, a 
yellow bill and black plumage, and like our moorhen, it fre- 
quently bobs its tail. Being fairly common, it is often heard but 
rarely seen, as it loves skulking in reed-beds but shuns open places. 
By setting a cage-trap with rotting vegetation on the floor to give 
it a natural appearance, I caught several specimens in the reeds 
by using maize-meal as bait. I have an idea that the birds entered 
the trap as much out of curiosity as for food, for although they 
will eat a certain amount of maize-meal, their natural diet is 
mainly insects and seeds. I had an unusual experience one day 
when I was sitting quietly in the punt setting a floating cage-trap. 
Looking up I saw a Black Crake timidly making his way over the 
water-lily leaves towards me. He was doing much clucking and 
tail-bobbing, indicating nervousness. I kept perfectly still and on 
he came, finally hopping on to the opposite end of the boat. His 
curiosity satisfied, he flew off and landed in the reeds—a brave 
effort considering the bird’s natural shyness. 
Snakes abounded on the wooded ridge surrounding the newly- 
formed lake; many, I suppose, had been driven there by the flood, 
and others were attracted by the army of frogs and the rodents 
driven fom their homes. As I was collecting anything likely to 
make an interesting zoo exhibit, these creatures provided me with 
plenty of excitement. Most of them, especially the Boomslangs 
and Green Mambas, were located in trees, and as these were 
thorny acacias it was no easy matter getting them out. The surest 
way of finding any snake in a tree was to go where a gathering 
of bulbuls were chattering excitedly in the branches. They are 
always the first to give vent to their alarm notes on seeing a snake, 
and this, in turn, attracts other birds, so that in the end there is 
usually a terrific hubbub coming from a host of different species, 
all wild with excitement. 
The natives themselves were afraid of the snakes, but at least 
they were useful in locating them (aided by the birds), and letting 
me know their whereabouts. In spite of their fear, there was 
