on ihe Double-banded Courser.



25



often I have heard this same whistle late at night when

camping out.


I kept R. bicinctus for fifteen months in my aviary at

Bloemfontein and took him home with me last July to the

Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park, where he was still alive

when I last heard of him. I took him home in a box with a

carefully padded top and had the good fortune to have enough

mealworms to feed him on, and on these and chopped cooked

meat he did quite well. He was always delightfully tame

and set up an impatient whistle when his dinner was not up

to time. This species does not bathe often, I only saw him do

so twice, but he likes a dust bath. He was a bit of a fad about

his food and got greatly excited when Barbets, Bulbuls, Glossy

Starlings, etc., came down for a share of his saucer, instead of

staying by his dinner steadily eating he would chase all round

the aviary after one bird and leave six eating hard, then return,

have one peck, and then off again after somebody else so that

he really worked quite hard for his living. On the ground he

was more or less master and inclined to be a bully, so that I was

rather amused one day to see him lying stretched out in the sun

while a Violet-eared Waxbill preened his feathers for him. Birds

of the size of Zosterops and Waxbills he did not mind, probably

considering them beneath his notice, but he had an especial

dislike of the Starlings.


This bird is quite common near Potchefstroon, Transvaal,

where I am now stationed, and generally speaking all over this

part of the Transvaal. It should be comparatively easy to collect

one or two of this species, which I very much wish to do, but

unfortunately I have not yet had the luck to find them. I hope

I may be more fortunate in the spring for I very much wish to

keep again the little Ringed Courser or “Dravelkie” as the

Boers call it.



