132 ANIMAL LIFE IN AFRICA 



visit to the water, they will not move again until about 

 half an hour before sunset, when a visit to the drinking- 

 place is the prelude to a night spent wandering over the 

 feeding-grounds. While standing or lying in their day 

 shelters inyalas are extremely difficult to detect and 

 approach, and the only chance of satisfactory observation 

 is, as we are now doing, to catch them as they slowly 

 make their way homewards. 



It is now 6.30, and the light is quite strong. A 

 streak or two of red appears low down in the east, and 

 bird life, till now only perceptible in the voices of the 

 solitary night-flyers, begins to assert itself. The bush 

 francolins first take up the call, to be quickly joined by 

 shrikes, warblers, and all manner of feathered denizens 

 of the forest. A grey lourie, with his persistent " Go 

 away, go away," swells the chorus, and the curious 

 throbbing " hoo hoo " of a flock of ground hornbills 

 comes from beyond the "pan." And now surely some 

 moving form fills one of the open vistas on the right. 

 Inyalas for certain ; but, by their bright chestnut hue, 

 females showing themselves, as they make leisurely 

 progress down the bush aisle, to be a cow with her last 

 year's calf. They disappear behind some bushes, and, 

 as they do so, first another solitary female, and then 

 two more together, appear where the first were seen. 

 A low grunting is heard, the guide murmurs " inkunzi," 

 and sure enough a pair of spiral horns are seen nodding 

 and anon disappearing behind some cover not fifty yards 

 away. Now is the chance for a photograph, surely, and 

 we hasten to make ready, just as an imposing form 

 issues from the shelter of a dense thicket and stands for 

 a moment fully revealed on the edge of the open strip. 



Certainly a full-grown inyala bull is a grand-looking 

 beast. His shaggy forehand and dewlap, and his proud 



