28 Mr. L. Beresford Mouritz on 



The beautiful Livingstone's Lourie (Turacus Uvingstonn) is, 

 however, much commoner^ but prefers the more sequestered 

 haunts to be found amid the trees and semitropical vege- 

 tation growing in ravines and along the, water-courses, 

 to the ordinary timbered bush. An ignorant native was at 

 great pains in the endeavour to persuade me that Turacus 

 was merely the female of the larger species ! 



On the march one day we passed a lot of deep holes dug 

 in the light soil, and our '' boys" explained that these had 

 been made by the local natives in the pursuit of "'pendwa'''' 

 (ant-bears). In one of these holes, in which there were 

 stakes driven in from side to side in the semblance of a 

 ladder, I found a species of bush Kingfisher breeding in 

 a tunnel close to the surface. This bird had a red bill, and • 

 seemed to have the whole of the upper side a bright cobalt- 

 blue. On the Moushosi Escarpment, later, I found a 

 Kingfisher, apparently quite similar to the above, nesting 

 in a hole of a tree about 10 feet from the ground — nest 

 contained young. Honey-Guides [Indicator indicator and 

 /. major^ were very plentiful, and the line of porters became 

 so scattered and impossible to handle, on account of their 

 putting down their loads to look for honey, that Ave had to 

 prohibit them breaking ranks for this purpose. The natives 

 call the Honey-Guide " inguyi," and they seem bo passion- 

 ately fond of honey that it was impossible to stop them from 

 following the " friend of bush-people/' as, directly our 

 backs were turned, they would sneak off in twos and threes 

 every time they heard the harsh grating '^churr . . . churr " 

 of an "^ inguyi.'^ Some of the loads after a long journey 

 would be so smeared and sticky with honey that we came to 

 curse these birds. At different times I noticed a number 

 of Kestrels, especially over the natives' lands and in the 

 more hilly regions, and I think they were identical with the 

 South African species (Cerchneis riqiicold). The Bateleur 

 Eagle (Helotarsus ecaudatus) is perhaps the commonest of 

 the larger Birds of Prey, and is known to the natives as 

 " chikori." 



Arriving at Mandoko, we stayed some time in the vicinity^ 



