AFRICAN BIRDS. 129 
and wandered unknown to civilized man, till he who has 
written this book saw them and brought them here. 
In a forest of Equatorial Africa, on the banks of the 
Ovenga River not far from Obindji Village, there was a 
plantation where birds came every day. There were 
many curious kind of birds there, and many I had never 
seen before. The time to see them was early in the 
morming, before the sun became so hot that they had to 
retire in the forest, or in the afternoon after the sun was 
hidden by the hills. But the morning was the best time. 
The natives had no name for many of these birds. 
Among the most curious ones were the fly-catchers, the 
stranger bee-eaters, the queer crimpers, and some very 
strange woodpeckers; while flying over them all were 
some nice little black swallows that were very pret- 
ty indeed. I remember how much I loved in the morn- 
ing to go over that plantation and watch them all, so that 
I might learn their habits and tell you something about 
_ them. 
Among the strangest of them all there was one that 
especially attracted my attention. As 4, approached the 
plantation I could hear, just on the edge of the forest, a 
noise that sounded very much as if some far-away people 
were hammering at something, or I should rather say, as 
if people were hammering at a tree. I carefully ap- 
proached the place. Iam sure you could ndt have heard 
my steps on the ground, so carefully I approached. I 
was dressed in a dark-blue suit of cotton goods, so that 
the birds might not notice me. At last I recognized the 
noise as coming from old friends of mine. They were 
birds that were hammering at two or three dead trees in 
such earnest that none of them observed me. 
He 
