336 TO THE UASIN GISHU [ch. xii 



hunted, flying from tree to tree, and never ceasing their 

 harsh chatter. Several times we followed birds, which 

 in each case led us to bee-trees, and then perched 

 quietly by until the gun-bearers and porters (Gouvimali 

 shone on such occasions) got out the honey, which we 

 found excellent eating, by the way. 



Our camp here was in a beautiful country, and game 

 — for the most part Uganda kob and singsing water- 

 liuck — often fed in sight of the tents. The kob is a 

 small short-haned waterbuck, with slightly different 

 horns. It is a chunky antelope, with a golden red coat. 

 I weighed one old buck which I shot, and it tipped 

 the beam at two hundred and twenty pounds. Kermit 

 killed a bigger one, weighing two hundred and forty 

 pounds, but its horns were poorer. In their habits the 

 kob somewhat resemble impalla, the does being found 

 in bands of twenty or thirty with a single master buck ; 

 and they sometimes make great impalla-like bounds. 

 They fed, at all hours of the day, in the flats near the 

 river and along the edges of the swamps, and were not 

 very wary. They never tried to hide, and were always 

 easily seen — in utter contrast to the close-lying, skulk- 

 ing, bohor reedbuck, which lay like a rabbit in the long 

 grass or reeds. The kob, on the contrary, were always 

 anxious themselves to see round about, and, like water- 

 buck and hartebeest, frequently used the ant-heaps as 

 lookout stations. It was a pretty sight to see a herd 

 of the bright red creatures clustered on a big ant-hill, 

 all the necks outstretched and all the ears thrown for- 

 ward. The females are hornless. By the middle of 

 November we noticed an occasional new-born calf. 



The handsome, shaggy-coated, singsing waterbuck 

 had much the same habits as the kob. Like the kob, 

 they fed at all hours of the day ; but they were more 



