194 THE MIGRATION OF HIRUNDO RUSTICA. 
African Finch, merrily join. The male of this bird (Chera 
procne) adorns itself during the breeding season with a vel- 
vet-black coat, scarlet epaulettes, and an elongated tail, over 
a foot long, though the body of the bird is only about as 
large as that of a Thrush; the female being dressed in a 
darker and lighter shaded brown, the same color the male 
assumes during the winter, denoting its sex by the faded 
epaulettes only, which mark so brightly the black festive sum- 
mer coat, All the noise made by these Passeres conirostres 
in unison with the whistling and the songs of real Oscines 
(Salicaria, Sylvia, Pratincola and others), and interrupted 
by the shrieks and squabbles, more or less loud and shrill, of 
the Gralle and Watatores, offers a natural concert of a 
peculiar kind, hardly to be reproduced by the human 
tongue or by the most skilful pen. For moments only, when 
the rapacious Mi/vus agyptiacus throws a shadow from his 
large wings upon the waters, the cries of love and enmity 
cease, to be renewed with the same vigor as soon as the 
rapacious bird of prey has disappeared. From all sides, from 
near and far, one by one, in pairs, in whole families, and 
in long lines or wedge-shaped arrays, Stanley Cranes 
(Tetrapteryx stanleyanus), the beautiful Kafir or Crested 
Cranes (Balearica regulorum), and many species of Herons, 
the small and large white, the gray, the purple, the black- 
necked, and the Goliath, (Ardea garzetta, A. egretta, A. 
cinerea, A. purpurea, A. atricapilla and A. goliath), also 
white and black Storks (C. alba and C. nigra), are returning 
to their sleeping-place. Wild Geese and Ducks, Plovers 
(Chettusia coronata, Hoplopterus speciosus and others), even a 
pair of Hammerkopfs (Scopus umbretta), which all kept the 
whole or a part of the day in the vicinity of the marsh, are 
now coming along, walking slowly and still grazing like the 
geese and ducks, or running and playing (like Chettusia 
coronata), or taking short flights, all claiming a place in the 
waters of the pool. In other parts of South Africa, where 
no marshes are to be found, but large and very shallow salt 
