Iii Wildest Africa *> 



ot a much-visited drinking-place is literally filled with 

 these l>eautiful and swift- winged birds. The rustling and 

 beating ot their wings in rapid flight makes in itself a 

 concert. I not unfrequently came upon places that bore 

 the name of the " Doves' water," or the " Doves' resting- 

 place." All the various voices of the many species of 

 doves that find a home in the Nvi'ka resound a^ain in 



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the traveller's ears for years after. Whether it be the 

 strange voice of the parrot-pigeon, that ushers in the 

 concert with a hollow " Kruh-kruh " and follows it up 

 with some remarkable notes, or the melancholy cry of 

 the little steel-spotted pigeon that comes to us from the 

 thickets, or the strong, loud-sounding love-notes of 

 the already-mentioned Colitmba aquatrix, Tern., so like 

 our ringdove, or, above all, the familiar sweet voices ot 

 the many small kinds of turtle-doves all these sounds, the 

 rustling and fluttering and beating of wings, the living, 

 moving picture presented by all these beautiful birds, 

 belong inseparably to the essence and being of the 

 \\fka. When the turtle-doves greet the morning with 

 their soft cooing, their call is answered from afar by 

 strange guttural tones borne swiftly through the air, 

 sounding like: " (ile-gle-lagak-gle-aga-aga," from the: velt- 

 towl hurrying like themselves to the water. Brehm, in 

 his Lchcn dcr I V/^'r/, has already raised a poetical 

 monument to them made up ot beautiful lines. But I 

 could not picture to myself the morning concert of the 

 bird world in the Xyika without the strange, cry of 

 the sand-fowl and the cooing of the doves, and the 

 peculiar sound of the beating wings ot the: velt-fowl as 



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