152 Phillips, Birds of the Sudan. [April 



In the neighborhood of Karkoj and El Mesherat (latitude about 

 13 N.) we began to see Green Monkeys in the taller trees, and here 

 and there the beautiful little Oribi, an antelope which will survive 

 long after the great animals of the eastern Sudan have been crowded 

 'out. About in this latitude also, Hornbills of two species become 

 ^common, though the small red-billed one, Lophoccrus hemprichi is 

 much the more plentiful. Prominent in the memory of those 

 burning hot noons is the rising call of this bird, "Weet, weet," 

 repeated till it reaches a crescendo, when the performer straightens 

 up, opens his wings and bobs up and down. This is almost the 

 only sound heard through the heat of the day, when bird life is 

 hushed and the natives are fast asleep in their conical straw huts. 



The large Brown Hornbill is a very different bird. He is wild, 

 usually seen singly, and inhabits high trees where he emits a loud 

 anvil-like note, at first single, then double, and accompanied by a 

 flapping of the wings. There is another sort, the great Abyssinian 

 Ground Hornbill, which is rare and we did not see it. 



A shy and very beautiful bird of the Blue-Nile is the Red-breasted 

 Bush-shrike, whose crimson underparts gleam through the thickets 

 like a living flame. These birds have responsive notes, the male 

 and female always combining in producing one call. I cannot do 

 better than quote from Dr. G. M. Allen's notes on this subject. 

 "Usually one bird gives a loud rich-toned whistle, "a-wheeo" the 

 first syllable very faint; the other bird instantly replies with a harsh 

 'churr,' given either at the same instant, or following so closely 

 that it is hard to distinguish the exact moment. Sometimes I have 

 heard two different birds respond to a single bird whistling. More 

 rarely the 'wheeo' is given in response to a call from the other, a 

 harsh 'churr churr.' The two birds of a pair usually keep close 

 together." Dr. Allen thought that the male gave the first note, 

 the whistle. 



As one gets south, parrots become much more plentiful. They 

 are of two sorts. A long-tailed kind, the commoner, ranges 

 pretty far north wherever there are large trees, and breeds high up 

 in holes, even in January and February. They crack the nuts of 

 the Laloab tree, a fruit much used by the antelopes and also very 

 good to quench one's thirst. This parrot and its nearly related 

 but larger Indian cousin are both seen breeding at large in the 



