132 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



the muscles under the skin. The very young fawns of the 

 kongoni seemed to have little fear of a horseman, if he ap- 

 proached while they were lying motionless on the ground; 

 but they would run from a man on foot. 



There were interesting birds, too. Close by the woods 

 at the river's edge, we saw a big black ground hornbill 

 walking about, on the lookout for its usual dinner of small 

 snakes and lizards. Large flocks of the beautiful Kavirondo 

 cranes stalked over the plains and cultivated fields, or flew 

 by with mournful, musical clangor. But the most interest- 

 ing birds we saw were the black whydah finches. The 

 female is a dull-colored, ordinary-looking bird, somewhat 

 like a female bobolink. The male in his courtship dress is 

 clad in a uniform dark glossy suit, and his tail-feathers 

 are almost like some of those of a barn-yard rooster, being 

 over twice as long as the rest of the bird, with a downward 

 curve at the tips. The females were generally found in 

 flocks, in which there would often be a goodly number of 

 males also, and when the flocks put on speed the males 

 tended to drop behind. The flocks were feeding in Heat- 

 ley's grain-fields, and he was threatening vengeance upon 

 them. I was sorry, for the male birds certainly have habits 

 of peculiar interest. They were not shy, although if we 

 approached too near them in their favorite haunts, the 

 grassland adjoining the papyrus beds, they would fly off 

 and perch on the tops of the papyrus stems. The long 

 tail hampers the bird in its flight, and it is often held at 

 rather an angle downward, giving the bird 'a peculiar and 

 almost insect-like appearance. But the marked and ex- 

 traordinary peculiarity was the custom the cocks had of 

 dancing in artificially made dancing-rings. For a mile and 



