324 



SAVAGE SUDAN 



brambles, mistletoes, lianas, and matted prehensile 

 climbers that often shut out the lights of heaven. 

 And amidst all this riot of plant-life, abounded denizens 

 equally perplexing. Something that might have been 

 a scrap of a rainbow flashed by. I fired, and the 

 victim was a bridled bee-eater Merops frenatus ; then 

 a flutteration in the vast canopy overhead attracted 

 attention. This time it was a trio of golden-winged 

 bats that fell. Next a flute-like whistle lured, and 

 a third shot produced an ebony-hued shrike whose 



crimson breast gleamed 

 like a flame of fire. Lan- 

 iarius erythrogaster is his 

 title, and besides the flute- 

 like note, he also chatters 

 like a magpie. But such 

 wealth of bird-life will not 

 be described. Not since 

 the epoch of the Ptolemies 

 or before it either 

 have those "home-coverts" 

 of ours resounded to such 

 a fusillade. Sometimes by night the bag would exceed 

 twenty brace, including emerald-green parrots, babblers, 

 barbets and barbatulas, serins, sunbirds, woodchat and 

 shrikes of a dozen species, waxbills, py telias, colies, hoopoes 

 and wood-hoopoes (Irrisor and Scoptelus], fire-finches and 

 whydahs with such exaggerated tailpieces that, when on 

 wing, they resembled squirrels volplaning for the rest I 

 must refer to the "official catalogue." 1 There may be 

 sportsmen who will smile at such enthusiasm for "tomtit- 



1 A pearl-spotted owlet (Glaucidium perlafum} proved to be the first 

 recorded from the Sudan : and we also obtained honey-guides (Indicator)^ 

 wryneck, and a fresh kind of swift (Cypselus horus), near Eneikliba. Red- 

 wattled lapwings (Sarciophorus tectus), as sketched, abounded on the drier 

 plains vociferous as peewits at home. A nest of a woodpecker (Mesopicus 

 goertari) contained a single big fledgeling on December 22nd. 



RED-WATTLED LAPWINGS 



(Sarciophorus tectus}. 



