314 SAVAGE SUDAN 



potential crime, yet suggested an ornithological problem. 

 Simultaneously with the weavers, there also "flighted" 

 other armies, obviously of the plover persuasion, and also 

 in numbers beyond all arithmetical computation. These 

 proved to be ruffs and reeves. But whence do such 

 numbers emanate? And where are they bred? I have 

 visited some few of the summer haunts of the ruff; a 

 hundred pairs may breed here, a thousand elsewhere. 

 But here we have them in millions. There must remain 

 regions unknown whither these amazing hosts retire to 

 nest each spring. Till I saw them thus in the Sudan, no 

 suspicion of the extreme abundance of the ruff as a species 

 had ever dawned upon me. 



At midday the ruffs resort to the islets and sand-banks 

 of the river, and a remarkable anachronism it is, in mid- 

 winter, to see their hosts split up over a hundred miniature 

 battlefields! The ruffs, of course, at this season boast 

 none of their nuptial finery ; yet everywhere are champions 

 challenging each other, ruffling and fluffing-up in mock 

 defiance exactly as is their vernal custom in far-away 

 northern lands. Thirty odd years ago I defined this 

 phenomenon as "Pseudo-erotism"- {Bird-Life of the 

 Borders, 1889, pp. 91 and 102-3). 



ENEIKLIBA 



To us, when we reached Eneikliba, the place was 

 nothing more than a camping-ground after a 1 7-mile ride 

 from some other nameless spot. But we discovered thereat 

 a wooded swamp that proved well-nigh a bird-paradise. 

 Probably it had once formed an ancient channel of 

 the river, though now lying several miles inland. En- 

 closed amidst dense belts of tamarisk and giant sedge 

 there lay broad pools of stagnant water, and from their 

 foetid surfaces uprose in gnarled fantastic arches the 

 roots of forest-trees. An altogether eerie aspect per- 

 vaded this semi-submerged forest. Its canopy of over- 



