52 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[Makch 1, 1899. 



energies chiefly to the kites. A kite comes swooping majes- 

 tically along as though he were altogether too fine a bird to 

 notice anything smaller than an eagle. Suddenly two peewits 

 rise from the ground and dash straight at that kite. He 

 swoops on as though he had noticed nothing. But the 

 screeching peewits whirl round again and attack him hotly 

 from above and below. Watch him carefully and you will 

 see him flinch and swerve, as time after time the brave 

 little birds dash into his face. When one pair of peewits 

 has seen him safely off their preserves, another pair flies 

 up and attacks him, and thus he is " escorted ' across the 

 marisnias. A pair of peewits is quite a match for a kite. 

 I have seen one forced to drop his meal — a piece of offal — 

 and fly away hungry because he happened to be too near 

 some peewits and their family. Strange to say, the 

 peewits do not attack the harriers so vigorously and per- 

 sistently, although they are even more numerous than 

 the kites, and perhaps' as great egg and chick eaters. In 

 fact, I feel sure that a harrier has a far more profitable 

 journey across the marismas than a kite ; but he goes 

 about his business in a quiet, unostentatious way, flying 

 low and quartering the ground in a systematic manner, 

 as though he were more of an entomologist than an 

 ornithologist. 



We had often wished to become intimately acquainted 

 with the stone curlew,* sometimes called the thicknee or 





:.kf"'^-, 



Fig. 1.— Our Camp. 



Norfolk plover, a bird which is to be seen in England only 

 in certain localities. Our wish was gratified on these dry 

 plains, where the bird was common. To a great extent it 

 18 a bird of the night, and it was at night, when their 

 stirring notes broke the stillness round the camp, that we 

 began our acquaintance with them. 



The usual note of the stone curlew is a loud harsh 

 cur-er-ree. One night, when sitting round our lamp 

 skinning and wiiting, in the midst of an angry crowd of 

 mosquitoes which one of our men was vainly endeavour- 

 ing to keep moving with a towel, a stone curlew gave us 

 an extraordinary solo. He appeared to be composing a 

 song. Beginning by rapidly repeating his usual note very 

 softly and in a very low key, he suddenly went up to a very 

 high key, then down again, and so on for quite ten 

 minutes. It was like a human singer going from bass to 

 falsetto, but the bird accomplished it perfectly, without a 

 break, and apparently without an effort. 



(EiHrnetiufS scolopa.v 



In the day these birds are usually silent and in hiding, 

 but they are not to be caught napping. They always 

 seemed to see us before we saw them, which was not to be 

 wondered at, since with their sandy brown plumage they 

 were very inconspicuous, while we were plainly visible at 

 quite three miles distance. Consequently we found it 

 difficult to cultivate the acquaintance of the stone curlew. 

 For the first few days, when one rose, as they generally do, 

 about one hundred yards oflf, we rushed towards the spot 

 knowing that its mate, having run from the eggs in alarm, 

 would soon take to flight. But we were always out- 

 manoeuvred ; the bird ran as fast as we did, rose suddenly 

 at an impossible distance, and soon joined the other bird 

 a mile or two away. We had more success by waiting 

 quietly behind our stalking horses when the birds rose. 

 Not being so alarmed they did not fly far, and several 

 times we marked them down and stalked them successfully. 

 Often, however, they were suspicious even of the calwstro 

 and ran away from it like greyhounds. Only twice did we 

 surprise these birds. On each occasion the bird imme- 

 diately lay at full length, with head extended flat upon 

 the ground, and when we had approached to within about 

 twenty yards, it leapt suddenly into the air and was off 

 and away before we recovered from our surprise. We 

 found several pairs of their beautifully-marked eggs lying 

 side by side in the merest scoop on the hard ground. In 

 the more fertile country we came across the eggs among the 

 sand, closed in on all sides by high tamarisk bushes — a 

 curious place to be chosen by a bird which is a lover of 

 the open country. 



We were riding home one evening, tired and fly-bitten, 

 across a sun-burnt plain, when we saw an Egyptian 

 vulture give chase to a stone curlew, which we had 

 frightened into flight. The curlew was evidently not at 

 ease. It began by flying low and straight, then it dodged 

 and turned and flew round and up, calling plaintively all 

 the while. The ungainly vulture flew doggedly and 

 sUently after it, keeping well up in the straight flying, but 

 getting sadly behind whenever it tried to follow the curlew's 

 sudden twists and turns. We watched this curious chase 

 until the birds were mere specks many miles away, and 

 we wondered much if the vulture had a private spite 

 against that stone curlew, or if it merely needed exercise 

 after some unwholesome gorge. 



Never shall we forget our first day in a lucia. From 

 afar we had seen the water — a great glistening expanse, 

 unbroken save for a group of cattle away on the left, and 

 straight before us a straggling bed of tall greyish reeds. 

 As we got nearer, the reeds gradually took the shape of 

 birds, until at length a long line of flamingoes" was 

 revealed standing in knee-deep water. They looked a 

 dazzling white in the brilliant sunshine. Round them were 

 hundreds of dark dots, ducks of various kinds, and a little 

 way off a small group of white clumsy-looking birds, which 

 we made out with glasses to be spoonbills, i Nearer to us, 

 in shallower water, black and white avocetsj and long- 

 legged stilts§ were feeding, while round the margins of 

 the water, dabbling in the soft mud, were hundreds of 

 small wading birds of various kinds. 



We determined to devote ourselves first to the flamingoes, 

 and try to stalk these wary birds. Our men put their 

 cahestivs in stalking trim, and we started to crouch behind 

 them when about two miles away from the birds. Before 

 we reached the water we came across a group of fifty or 

 sixty mounds of mud some eight or ten inches high. 

 These were old nests of the flamingoes, and our men told us 



* Phrenicopterue roseus, 

 X Hecut'rirosfra acocelta. 



+ Flatalea leucorodia. 

 § Himanfojius candiilu 



