498 APPENDIX C 



where the occupants were singing, dancings and playing their crude 

 stringed instruments. We ran into a bunch of five of these foxes, and 

 got four of them, none of which was the young of the year. After 

 shooting one, we would search about in the dark until the light picked 

 up another pair of eyes, and in this way we kept circling about close to 

 the village. One fox was killed within two hundred yards of the rail- 

 road station, and at dusk one evening I saw a fox emerge from a burrow 

 close to a group of natives, and scamper across the flat. The stomachs 

 of several were examined, and found to contain about a quart of termites 

 and other insects. 



Giant Shrew {Crociditra nyanscE). Giant shrews were common at Lake 

 Naivasha, where most of them were caught in the thick reeds and rank 

 grass bordering the lake. One was taken at Nyeri and another on 

 Mount Kenia, at an altitude of 10,700 feet. They seemed to be as much 

 diurnal as nocturnal, and were captured in traps baited with rolled oats, 

 dried apple, and raw meat. They inhabited the dense parts of the 

 thickets, where the foliage had to be parted, and a clearing made for the 

 traps. These localities were the home of a large rat, and many of the 

 rats captured were decapitated or partly eaten by animals that probably 

 were giant shrews. A shrew captured alive was very ferocious, and 

 would seize upon anything that came within its reach. When fully 

 excited, and lifted into the air by its tail, it would emit a loud, shrill, 

 chirping note. 



Short-tailed Shrew (Surdisorex norce). Collected between altitudes of 10,000 

 and 12,100 feet on Mount Kenia. With the exception of those collected 

 at 10,000 feet, where they were trapped in open grassy and brushy parks 

 in the bamboo, most of them were taken in runways of Otomys, and all 

 of those taken at 12,100 were caught in such runways in tall marsh 

 grass. 



Elephant Shrew [Elephantulus pulcher). Both diurnal and nocturnal. While 



riding over the country I frequently saw them darting through the 



runways from one thicket to another. Nearly every clump of bushes 



and patch of rank vegetation in the Sotik and Naivasha districts was 



tra\ersed with well-worn trails, used by diiferent species of Mus and 



shrews. The elephant shrews were most common on the dry flats, where 



clumps of fibre plants grew, and their trails usually led into some thorny 



thicket and finally entered the ground. 



Yellow-Winged Tree Bat {Lavia J'rons). These large semi-diurnal bats lived 



in the thorn-tree groves and thick bush along the Athi, South Guaso 



Nyero, and Nile rivers, wliere we found them more or less common, and 



at the latter place abundant. At the two first named places they were 



almost always found in pairs, hanging from the thorn trees by their feet, 



their wings folded before their faces. When disturbed, they fly a short 



distance and alight ; but when we returned to the spot a few minutes 



later, they would often be found in the same tree from which they had 



been started. On the Nile at Rhino Camp, and in suitable places all 



along the trail between Kampala and Butiaba, it was not unusual to find 



three and four in a single thorn-tree. On dark days, and once in the 



bright sunlight, I saw these bats flying about and feeding. At evening 



they always appeared an hour or so before the sun went down. Their 



method of feeding was quite similar to that of our fly-catching birds. 



They would dart from the branches of a thorn-tree, catch an insect, then 



return and hang head downward in the tree while they ate the morsel. 



One was captured with a young one clinging to it head downward, its 



feet clasped about its mother's neck. 



