GBOUND HOBNBILL, OB BBOM-VOGEL. 51 



leaves its hold. This they repeat till the snake is dead. If the 

 reptile advances on them, they place both wings in front of them, 

 completely covering their heads and most vulnerable parts." 

 When the snake is dead they proceed to bite it between their 

 two mandibles throughout its whole length, probably dislocating 

 the snake's backbone. It is then swallowed head first, and, if 

 the snake is a large one, the bird will go about with half of it 

 trailing out from between its jaws. Tortoises, too, are much 

 relished. In this case all the flesh, including the head and 

 limbs, are neatly picked away from the unhappy reptile, leaving 

 the shell clean and entire without damage. 



The call is a kind of " boom boom," constantly repeated until 

 it becomes quite wearisome. Mr. Ayres states that it can be 

 heard at a great distance, under favourable circumstances as far 

 as two miles. My experience — which, however, is confined to a 

 bird in captivity — does not quite confirm this ; but the sound, 

 though by no means loud, has a remarkable penetrating power. 

 The call of the female is similar, but is pitched a tone above that 

 of the male, and is usually heard in answer to him. When 

 "booming" the red pouch under the throat is generally, though 

 not invariably, distended with air ; this action can be performed 

 at will. Mr. Layard lays great stress on the evil stench emitted 

 by this bird, but I have not found this at all noticeable in the 

 case of the individual observed by myself. 



A complete account of the nesting habits of the Brom-vogel 

 has not, so far as I am aware, been yet given, but it doubtless 

 builds a nest on the flat crown of a tree where the trunk has de- 

 cayed away, or else in a hole in a tree. Dr. Stark visited a nest 

 at Boschfontein, near Balgowan, in Natal ; it was in a hole some 

 forty feet up in the trunk of a large tree growing in a small piece 

 of thick bush. The birds were stated to nest annually in the 

 same place, and Mr. Hutchinson, who showed him the nest, 

 believed that several females laid in the same hole, as more than 

 one pair of birds visited the young ones. The Brothers Wood- 

 ward also found a nest built of sticks in a large tree standing by 

 itself on the high flat lands over the Ifafa River, in Natal ; in it 

 were two young birds, one much larger than the other. 



An egg, now in the South African Museum, taken by Colonel 

 Bowker, at Old Morley, a mission station in Tembuland, is a 



