ZOOLOGY 397 



must be conscious of the black chats with white patches on their 

 wiugs, hopping about the settlements, courting, singing, fluttering their 

 wings, and turning back their tails. The flamingoes on Lakes Naivasha 

 and Hannington, the colleges of marabou storks, the companies of crown 

 cranes, the solitary stalking secretary bird, the wheeling kites, the griffon 

 vultures, the black and white Egyptian vultures with yellow beaks and 

 yellow legs, the gorgeous, glossy starlings, with their plumage of iridescent 

 blue-green and copper-red, the brightly coloured or extravagantly plumed 

 widow finches and weaver birds are all familiar objects in the landscapes 

 of the Eastern Province. The grey parrots, and the many richly plumed 

 plantain-eaters and turacos in the forests of the Central, Western, and 

 Uganda Provinces, the screaming fish eagles, the brown Xecrosyrtes vulture, 

 the grey Spizaetus eagles, and the handsome bateleur and black-crested 

 eagles, the sun birds, barbets, green parrots, green pigeons, blue and mauve 

 rollers are seldom absent from one's sight in the daytime as one traverses 

 the forests and the grassy down country in Uganda, Toro, Busoga, and 

 Elgon. The shores of the Victoria Nyanza and of the other lakes, the 

 marshes and back-waters of the Nile, are frequented by countless water- 

 birds, by whale-headed storks and saddle-billed storks, by herons of gigantic 

 size or minute, rail-like form — herons that are snow-white in many species, 

 or dark slaty blue or fawn-colour ; by spur-winged geese, Egyptian geese, 

 knob-nosed ducks, and the exquisite little "pygmy goose"; by pelicans, 

 cormorants, and darters, to name only a few among the more prominent 

 types. 



I will attempt to give a few notes concerning the more common, 

 striking, or rare members of this avi-fauna. 



In India and Africa there is a group of birds related to the finches and 

 starlings which are called weaver birds from their habits of interlacing 

 grass and leaf stalks into a regular network to form their pendent nests, 

 A section of these weaver birds is known as widow finches, from the fact 

 that the male during the breeding season develops his tail feathers into 

 extraordinary plumes out of all proportion to the size of his body. The most 

 extravagant of all these birds in the development of tail is Chera progne, 

 of which a picture is given. This bird is found in parts of i^outh Africa, 

 and reappears again (strange to say) in the north-eastern part of the 

 Uganda Protectorate. In this Chera (which is about the size of a thrush) 

 not only are the plumes of the tail such as would be remarkable in size 

 in a gamecock, but the primaries and secondaries of the wings appear also 

 to be permanently enlarged out of all proportion to the body, in order to 

 assist in supporting this enormous tail. The female is a small finch-like 

 bird, with a flat tail not out of the common. The male in this species is 

 supposed to drop these heavy plumes after the breeding season. When 



