318 On Some Birds of the White Nile.


Meyer’s Parrot. I have got them safely home and hope they will

nest. As I write this they are moulting hard but are otherwise

very healthy. At Gondokoro, our farthest point, and the first

military station in Uganda, I saw very few birds. Spice-birds

nested in the thatch of the houses, and I saw one or two Glossy

Starlings. Returning down the river one sees much the same

kinds of birds. At Mongalla a pair of Yellow Wagtails had a

nest in the river bank close to my cabin window.


One evening as I was writing in the deck cabin, a bird

flew in, attracted I suppose by the light, and I caught it. It was

a beautiful Kingfisher, not larger than a Sparrow, chiefly golden

bronze in colour with a vermillion beak and a patch of bright

cobalt blue round and behind each eye (n). I put it in a cage for

the night, meaning to study the colours by day, but it escaped

through the bars of a primitive native cage. At a place about

12 miles up the Sobat, where we steamed to deliver mails to the

American Mission, we saw five or six immense black and white

Storks with bright red beaks ( o ). Close to them was a flock of

about fifty Guinea-fowl, much darker and richer in colour than

ours (/). The latter furnished a welcome change to our menu.

At one village we saw two half-tamed Ostriches kept for their

feathers.


At Gebel-Ain, 220 miles south of Khartoum, I saw several

pairs of birds which I cannot be certain were Doves or

Parroquets. I never could get very near them. They seemed

to fly about in pairs, the flight being like Budgerigars. The

general impression of colour was chocolate and black, with very

round bullet heads and curved beaks and long tail feathers (r).


Here too we got a beautiful Glossy Starling with yellow

eyes (s). It was wounded and I hoped to save its life, but could

not. -


[We are indebted to Mr. Meade-Waldo for having kindly

gone through this interesting article and identified the birds so

well described by Mrs. Charrington. —Ed.]



(«). Ceyx ? (p). Numida plilonorhynca.


(o). The Saddle-bill Stork. (>•). The Blue-uaped Coly, Coitus macrurus.


(s). Lamprotornis porphyropterus .



