^°^i^4^^] Phillips, Birds of the Sudan. 155 



"Crocodile-bird" of the Greeks, and in Arabic it is called the 

 "Crocodile Watcher." It is doubtful whether this bird ever really 

 feeds inside the crocodile's mouth. The sand bars are alive with 

 these little fellows, and they feed busily around the very jaws of 

 the huge reptiles with absolute unconcern. They are said to bury 

 their eggs. 



The common resident plovers are the African Thick-knee or 

 Stone Plover, and the handsome Spur-winged Plover. These 

 latter are conspicuous Lapwings with white faces, black breasts 

 and black head caps. 



We made a special point of collecting large numbers of nightjars 

 and bats. As often as we had time we would take our guns at 

 sunset and wander down near the river for the evening flight, when 

 we were camped in a suitable spot. For the bats we tried to get an 

 open piece of bare sand where we could find them in the dark, but 

 for the nightjars we picked out open spots in the tall elephant grass. 

 This was a delightful time of day. The glare of the afternoon was 

 over, the last line of women and girls filed back to the village with 

 waterjars gracefully poised on their heads, huge flocks of weaver 

 birds were settling for the night, whirring down by thousands and 

 disappearing in the tall grass with much chirping and rustling, the 

 last doves were flying back after their evening drink, while the wind 

 dropped steadily to the universal calm of the winter night. Every 

 once in a while a flock of weavers would rise out of the grass with a 

 dull roar, only to settle immediately, and often the first night-hawk 

 of the evening would frighten them into a panic as he sailed over 

 their roosting place. When it was almost dark the grass region 

 would become alive with two species of nightjars, the long-tailed 

 and the Egyptian. The numbers of these birds about Mangangani 

 was really remarkable. The former has a single clucking note and 

 is the commoner of the two. We often sprung it in the woods in 

 parties of three or four in the daytime. It is a very handsome bird 

 with a tail in the male ten or eleven inches long, a broad white bar 

 across the primaries and another across the wing coverts. The 

 female has a shorter tail. The Eg^^Tptian nightjar is a pale colored 

 short-tailed species. The third kind is the famous standard 

 winged species, in which the male has a pair of elongated raquet 

 tipped primaries, reaching twenty-one inches in some cases. The 



