GAME-BIRDS OF SOUTH AFRICA 



owing to being continually persecuted both by natives and 

 by whites, and to its own stupidity. 



" I have always found it a remarkably stupid bird, 

 and have known one to stand calmly looking at me witliin 

 20 yards while I hunted wildly through my pockets and 

 haversack for a suitable cartridge, 



" Its favourite method of escape is to lie motionless in 

 the long grass with outstretched neck ; it is then very 

 difficult to see, and it will let you pass quite close without 

 moving. It rises slowly, and being a soft feathered bird 

 is easily killed. 



" It feeds on locusts, beetles, berries, etc., and in winter 

 gets extraordinarily fat." 



Sergt. Davies writes me further to say : "I would 

 draw your attention to the long legs and proportionately 

 long neck in this species, which at once distinguish it from 

 all other South African Bustards. I have not seen this 

 pointed out in any book. This is so noticeable in the 

 live birds that they have often appeared to me to 

 resemble tiny Ostriches. 



" Mr. Grant, in the Ibis, 1902, in describing Otis lovati, 

 figures the wings of both this species and Otis lovati, and 

 also both sexes of the latter. I should like to remark that 

 all the adult males of Otis melanogaster I have seen have 

 much more white on the wings than in Mr. Grant's figure, 

 and, if the plate of Otis lovati is correctly drawn, that species 

 differs from Otis melanogaster in shape, being much shorter 

 on the leg and with a shorter neck." 



An egg found by the Woodwards in Natal was laid 

 on the bare ground. It was cream-coloured, smeared and 

 blotched with dark brown. 



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