740 BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
after, when they are easily shot, as the same birds always return 
to the same tree every evening; and the sportsman being hidden 
beneath, he easily loads his game-bag with them as they straggle 
home from their day’s labour. These fine birds are now becoming 
very scarce, in consequence of their habits being so regular and so 
well known. They are very good eating when properly cooked. 
Their nest is built on a bough overhanging the water ; it consists 
of coarse sticks lined with a little fine grass; the concavity is 
just sufficient to prevent the eggs, four in number, from rolling 
out; year after year the same pair, if undisturbed, build in the same 
tree.” 
Majors Butler and Feilden and Captaid Reid have the following 
note upon this species in Natal: ‘‘ Very numerous at the Ingagane 
(= Black Ibis, in Kaffir) River; there is a favourite roosting-place 
on a precipitous range of low cliffs overhanging the river, about a 
mile above the drift, on the main Newcastle Road. Here Reid 
obtained specimens, and had a good opportunity of observing their 
habits ; but he was unable, unfortunately, to ascertain if they bred 
there. As many as one hundred made use of these cliffs at roosting 
time, leaving in small bands long before sunrise for their feeding- 
grounds in the marshy tracts on the veldt, and returning in the same 
order about sundown, uttering their loud and weird cries the while. 
There were smaller roosting-places lower down the river, but the 
species was certainly not common elsewhere in the Newcastle district. 
We are informed on the very best authority that these birds are 
most delicious eating, ‘fit for the Prince of Wales,’ as one man 
described them ; and Butler also pronounces them to be excellent birds 
for the table, in fact better than the ‘ Knorhaan,’ being more tender 
and highly flavoured. Butler adds the followimg note on its nidifica- 
tion: ‘ Found a nest at Colenso on the 13th November. It was an 
ordinary stick nest, well lined with dry grass, and placed in the 
fork of a low bough, overhanging a well-wooded stream running out 
of the Tugela River, and about seven feet from the ground. It 
contained three incubated eggs of a light dingy olive-green colour, 
smudged over with dark brown, and very unlike the ordinary type 
of Ibis eggs. The nest was solitary, and the hen bird flew off close 
to me as I approached it, uttering its peculiar call. I saw no other 
birds of that species near the spot, but they may, notwithstanding, 
sometimes build in groups.’ ” 
