THE AUK: 



A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF 

 ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol. XXXI. April, 1914. No. 2 



AMONG THE BIRDS OF THE EASTERN SUDAN. 



BY JOHN C. PHILLIPS. 



Plate XIII} 



Looking back on our short collecting trip into the eastern part 

 of the Sudan, the Blue-Nile basin, it is remarkable how strongly 

 the first few days of the trip stand out in memory. The novelty 

 of great spaces, of the groaning, toiling camels, of the burning 

 noons and delicious nights, soon dissolves into an everyday exis- 

 tence, and one week becomes almost exactly like the next; so 

 exactly, in fact, that after a month or more one ceases to remark 

 on the weather and almost forgets he is living out of doors. A 

 feeling rather steals over one that this is not the open air, but a 

 great glass house, steam heated and weather proof. 



Behold us then launched suddenly from the dusty train into the 

 brilliant moonlight at Sennar. It was Christmas Eve, and all day 

 long the train had been crawling away from Khartoum, over 

 dusty durrah fields, at an average rate of just twelve miles an hour. 

 Amidst great confusion we detrained our nine camels, giving three of 

 them an opportunity to escape, which, camel like, they soon took 

 advantage of. 



In a large thorn enclosure we stowed away our luggage, made 

 our beds and turned in. Supper was a brief affair that night. 

 The full moon glared down upon us, a striped hyena gave his very 



> Female Caprimulgua eleanora Phillips, three quarters natural size. 



149 



