184 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
could one begin to trap such creatures that never remained for 
long on any particular tree and always chose the very top of a 
high one? 
As I stood watching them in their tree-top world, I realized 
the futility of making any assault on them in such a situation; 
but all birds have to roost and I wondered where—perhaps in a 
hole in a bank along the river near which they were now perched. 
The idea spurred me on. With their tree-top habits it was not 
difficult to locate them, and this I did later in the day when the 
sun was setting. I sat quietly in the river-bed and watched. The 
twilight was short, and soon the bee-eaters made off to another 
tree a quarter of a mile away along the river. I caught up with 
them and watched again. At this point the river was skirted by a 
thickly forested steep hill, and to a tall tree on this the bee-eaters 
flew. It was now getting rapidly darker and the birds suddenly 
plunged into the foliage out of sight for the night. Two things 
I had discovered: that they roosted in the forest, and almost 
certainly in a particular place. The following evening I took up 
my position at this point, in a spot where I could watch the birds’ 
movements on leaving the tall trees where I had last seen them. 
To me this was all very exciting. The birds arrived according to 
schedule, but then there was an awful suspense during which time 
the undergrowth became rapidly enveloped in the twilight gloom. 
At last the birds few down to a point I could not clearly see and 
disappeared, apparently into the bowels of the earth. 
I left it at that and threaded my way through the forest under- 
growth to the river-bed and IJ then began the long walk home, 
well satisfied with the way things were going. 
The following day I returned and searched the spot where the 
bee-eaters had disappeared into the undergrowth; it was not long 
before I found a well-used hole running steeply into the earth 
and just about large enough to admit one of these birds. The 
campaign was drawing to its logical conclusion, and the evening 
shadows found me closeted in a thicket overlooking the hole. I 
hurriedly covered this with a special net, for time was short. How- 
ever, before I had finished I had to use my electric torch as the 
net had to be pegged down and so arranged that on leaving the 
hole the bird would get well clear of it before contacting the net. 
