202 WANDERINGS AND MEMORIES 



exquisite courtship display close to my perch (I 

 was up a tree waiting for lions). The sun just 

 caught the marvellous colours on the shot-purple 

 wings as they spread them to show their beauty. 

 Elevating their crests they hopped round one 

 another, uttering a low guttural call, and seemed 

 to understand the effect that their brilliant plumage 

 would create.^ 



More humble, but none the less welcome, was the 

 advent one morning in November of one of our 

 own little Willow Warblers from England. It 

 sang a subdued little song, something like the 

 one it utters just before leaving our shores in 

 September, and seemed as if it had brought a 

 message of love from home. As I watched it, 

 I wondered if it had come from my garden in 

 Sussex. Various species of African Swallows, too, 

 were very common near the border to the south, 

 especially the chestnut-bellied one with the long 

 tail, and these, with the rare White-headed Swallow, 

 I found breeding in the caverns of the cliffs in the 

 hills to the south. Swifts, including our Swift 

 and the Chinese Swift, were also noted in large 

 numbers, flying high in the heavens, whilst I 

 observed the nests of the Palm Swift in some fringed 

 palms growing on the banks of the Amala, and 

 watched the birds going in and out of their domed 

 nests. Here, too, were also colonies of Weaver- 

 birds, often hung over the water itself, whilst 

 other species nested out in the open park-lands on 

 stunted thorn-trees. 



One of the strangest and most interesting birds 



^ Sir H. Johnston has a good illustration of this bird in his 

 work on Uganda and East Africa. 



