GOLD COAST 205 
his face plastered with cream, devouring this new-found delicacy 
with much gusto. 
A few days after my first journey through the savanna country 
the first heavy rain of the season fell and the charred stumps of 
trees soon burst into a wonderful green, and from the ash-covered 
soil a profusion of plants sprang up in an incredibly short space of 
time. It was as if the whole countryside had been suddenly thrust 
from winter into spring. Although all this was very pleasing to the 
eye it only meant extra work for me, as many of the birds left the 
riverside foliage and returned to their savanna haunts. If I had 
come to the district a few weeks earlier it would have saved me 
miles of trudging, especially when trapping sunbirds. There were 
some lovely species here not found in the forest zone, such as the 
Coppery, the Splendid, the Beautiful, and the Senegal Scarlet- 
breasted Sunbird—all exquisite birds with metallic plumage. 
Specimens of all these were obtained, but the Splendid Sunbirds, 
which rival in beauty the Superb Sunbird of the forest, were by far 
the hardest to trap. They were rather uncommon and showed a 
preference for feeding on the flowers of the higher savanna trees 
rather than on the flowering shrubs of the riverside. I have always 
regarded sunbirds as the quickest of all birds in detecting anything 
in the nature of traps, nets or bird-lime, and these Splendid Sun- 
birds were certainly no exception. They were so elusive that after 
many weeks of tree-climbing I managed to get only three speci- 
mens. 
One day I visited a tall wild fig-tree, frequented by a variety of 
birds, to inspect a cage-trap, when I noticed a Gambian Tree 
Squirrel feeding on the figs. I had to climb the tree to take a Glossy 
Starling from the trap, and so wondered what line of action the 
squirrel would take in view of the fact that there were no adjoin- 
ing trees. My own idea was that he would let me get half-way up 
the tree and then sidetrack me and scuttle down the trunk to earth, 
but I was wrong. As I reached the lower branches his concern was 
obvious as he scampered hither and thither near the top, then 
suddenly he ran to the tip of one of the longest branches and leapt 
into space. As he sailed to the ground I could see his legs and tail 
stretched to the utmost to act as resistance and so break the fall. He 
hit the hard ground with a thump and there was a momentary 
