404 ZOOLOGY 



region.* The whale-headed stork is of doubtful affinities: in all probability 

 it is more closelv related to the herons than to the storks. It really 

 seems to be an independent development from some primitive stork-like 

 form, like the existing tufted umbre (Scoyjus umhretta). This is a brown 

 biid with a short, broad beak not unlike that of the whale-headed stork. 

 The Scopus is confined in its range to tropical Africa. Balceniceps rex 

 is verv rarely seen on the shores of broad rivers or open sjiaces of water; 

 it generally frequents marshes and narrow backwaters or inlets. It feeds 

 principally on fish, but probably also swallows crustaceans and molluscs. 

 These birds are generally seen in pairs, presumably male and female. 

 The first specimens were sent to England from the Upper Nile by the 

 traveller, trader, and consul, Petherick. They were supposed to be restricted 

 in their distribution to the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the Upper Nile. It is 

 forty-one years since these earlier specimens were received by the British 

 Museum. The revolt of the ]Mahdi cut us off from access to the regions 

 of the Upper Nile, and for some reasons I cannot give no one ap})ears to 

 have observed the existence of this bird on the northern shores of the 

 Victoria Nyanza. Soon after we reached Entebbe, in Uganda, however, 

 my assistant, Doggett, when out shooting one day brought home a 

 specimen of Balceniceps, and it was afterwards found to be quite common 

 in the creeks close to the Government station at Entebbe. When the 

 British Museum had been supplied with sufficient specimens, the bird 

 was placed on the protected list, and it is to be hoped every effort will 

 be made to preserve from extinction so remarkable a creature. 



Grebes are very common on the smaller crater lakes and most other 

 small pieces of water in the Uganda Protectorate. The various ducks and 

 geese in their effect on the landscapes have been alluded to in many 

 passages of this book. Those interested in their distribution can find the 

 species enum.erated in the appendices of this chapter. The striped-headed 

 gull, one or more species of terns, and red-beaked scissor-bills are common 

 on the great lakes. The plovers, thick-knees, lily-trotters and coursers, 

 the snipe, knots, and stilt-plovers, are all common African species, and do 

 not, so far as I know, offer anything peculiar to the Protectorate. The 

 same may be said about pigeons, though attention should be called to the 

 beautiful, if common, Golumha guinea, a West African biid which is 

 frequently met with in the well-wooded parts of the Protectorate, and which 

 I have illustrated in this book. 



* It seeiiLS curious that a fish-eatiug water-l)ir(l should be restricted in its range to 

 the Nile basin. It may be that the Upper Congo and Tanganyika are not marshy 

 enough. Sir Henry Stanley asserts that the Balceniceps is found on the Tapper Congo, 

 and the i^resent writer believed as far back as 1882 that he had seen it on the 

 marshes of the Kunene in South- West Africa. 



