462 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



the bird itself almost escape notice. When seen flying, the 

 first impression conveyed was of two large, dark moths or 

 butterflies fluttering rapidly through the air; it was with a 

 positive effort of the eye that I fixed the actual bird. The 

 big slate and yellow bats were more interesting still. There 

 were several kinds of bats at this camp; a small dark kind 

 that appeared only when night had fallen and flew very near 

 the ground all night long, and a somewhat larger one, lighter 

 beneath, which appeared late in the evening and flew higher 

 in the air. Both of these had the ordinary bat habits of 

 continuous, swallow-like flight. But the habits of the 

 slate and yellow bats were utterly different. They were 

 very abundant, hanging in the thinly leaved acacias around 

 the tents, and, as everywhere else, were crepuscular, indeed 

 to a large extent actually diurnal, in habit. They saw 

 well and flew well by daylight, passing the time hanging 

 from twigs. They became active before sunset. In catching 

 insects they behaved not like swallows but like flycatchers. 

 Except that they perched upside down so to speak, that is, 

 that they hung from the twigs instead of sitting on them, 

 their conduct was precisely that of a phcebe bird or a wood 

 peewee. Each bat hung from its twig until it espied a 

 passing insect, when it swooped down upon it, and after 

 a short flight returned with its booty to the same perch 

 or went on to a new one close by; and it kept twitching 

 its long ears as it hung head downward devouring its prey. 

 There were no native villages in our immediate neigh- 

 borhood, and the game was not shy. There were many 

 buck: waterbuck, kob, hartebeest, bushbuck, reedbuck, 

 oribi, and duiker. Every day or two Kermit or I would 

 shoot a buck for the camp. We generally went out together 

 with our gun-bearers, Kermit striding along in front, with 

 short trousers and leggings, his knees bare. Sometimes only 

 one of us would go out. The kob and waterbuck were 

 usually found in bands, and were perhaps the commonest 

 of all. The buck seemed to have no settled time for feed- 

 ing. Two oribi which I shot were feeding right in the open, 



