TANGANYIKA (II) 241 
This brave little soul, with such a lovable character, succumbed 
after a few days, and his passing was like that of a human friend. 
Delys was in tears and insisted on making a neat little grave, an 
action which, with my wider knowledge of Africa, I knew 
would be futile, but on such occasions it is as well to give senti- 
ment full rein. The following morning the grave was empty— 
a predator of the African night in the form of a hyena or jackal 
having undone in one swoop our efforts to express affection for 
a departed friend. 
The native cattle were always of interest, not because of their 
special breed but because of the Red-billed Oxpeckers they at- 
tracted. These birds are related to starlings but progress in wood- 
pecker-like fashion as they run all over the bodies of certain 
mammals, particularly rhinos, buffaloes, and cattle, searching for 
ticks, blood-sucking flies, and apparently scurf. This is a perfect 
example of a bird becoming so specialized that it is now wholly de- 
pendent upon mammals for its existence. Most people favor these 
birds on account of the great number of parasites they consume, 
but some maintain that they do a lot of harm, especially to pack- 
animals with abrasions, by pecking at the wounds to get blood 
and small pieces of flesh and so prevent them from healing. 
It is amazing that those mammals that suffer, without demur, 
the attendance of oxpeckers, no matter on which part of the body 
they cling, are quite intolerant of flies. 
I caught a pair of these curious birds which were nesting under 
the eaves of an outhouse, but they refused all forms of live insect 
food. I tried forcibly feeding them for a while on raw bloody liver, 
but they never showed any inclination to feed voluntarily. If I 
could have introduced this food on the back of a cow, no doubt 
it would have been gobbled down at great speed, but in a traveling 
cage it ceased to have any significance. The only hope of estab- 
lishing birds of this nature is to get them from the nest before 
they have developed rigid habits. 
The natives here brought me a number of Fischer’s Lovebirds: 
I soon discovered their attitude to one another when not separated 
into tree pairs is certainly not one of love. Every morning I found 
one or more killed through having its scalp bitten into, or some 
