EINAR LÖNNBERG, BIRDS. 



impossible to secure any very large series during the prevailing circumstances as I also 

 had to think about getting mammals and other animals at the same time. The number 

 of bird skins amounts thus only to not quite 900 specimens (885). Twentythree species 

 were observed but not shot, mostly large and very easily recognized birds. About half 

 a dozen more I had to remain in uncertainty. 



Although often monotonous, the landscape of those parts of East Africa through 

 which our Expedition passed, shows a number of different types, which all of them offer 

 different conditions of life to the birds and therefore are inhabited by different species. 

 Before mankind altered the natural conditions there were probably three different kinds 

 of main types of landscape which with their different subtypes, or gradations and inter- 

 gradations more or less mixed, occupied the greatest part of the country. These principal 

 kinds of landscape are or rather were steppe, thornbush, and for est. 



The steppe may be perfectly open without any trees or bushes at all. It is then 

 grass-steppe, but the grass may be very differently developed not only at different 

 seasons of the year, but also according to the soil, and the quantity of the annual rainfall. 

 The grass may be high and dense, or it may even be so scanty that the naked soil shows 

 broadly between every little tuft. This kind of steppe is not far from a desert from a bio- 

 logical point of view. Very often scattered acacia-bushes are seen on the grass-steppe. 

 Especially if the dry grass is not burnt off annually, these and other bushes may increase 

 in number and finally a bush-steppe is formed. It is a grass-covered plain with more 

 or less densely scattered small and medium-sized bushes, and often with an acacia-tree 

 rising abovethe bushes here and there. On the acacia-steppe (Pl. 1) the ground is covered 

 by grass. There are seldom any bushes, except some few scattered ones which, however, 

 are not very conspicuous. The characteristic appearance of this landscape is produced 

 by the numerous flat-topped acacias which stånd apart like the trees in an english park. 



The thornbush (Pl. 1, fig. 3) is formed by a generally dense growth of thorny, spiny, 

 and prickly bushes of many different kinds and belonging to various f amilies. A few acacias 

 and Euphorbias rise as trees here and there. The soil is probably as a rule very poor in 

 the thornbush, and produces very little grass, or other ground vegetation in the shape of 

 some hardy plants or lowly shrubs with wooden stems and branches but herbaceous tops. 



The forest is, of course, also different in different places. There is the deep primeval 

 forest (Pl. 1 , fig. 2) composed of all kinds of trees some of which attain a gigantic height rising 

 above the others, which are so interwoven with their branches and foliage as to form a 

 dense roof through which the sun-rays cannot penetrate. It is therefore a continuous twilight 

 or darkness in this forest. In certain localities the trees have not straight stems but have 

 more the shape of gigantic, overgrown bushes, and they do not attain the same height as 

 the trees with straight stems. In other places the big trees stånd more apart so that the 

 sun-rays are admitted to penetrate and procreate a rich undergrowth. This latter might 

 again be very different in different places. It might be a dense mäss of bushes interwoven 

 with lianse many of which are spiny so that it is impossible to pass through except on paths 

 or tunnels formed by animals of some kind. It may in other places be an undergrowth 

 of 2 — 3 m. high sprouts of Hibiscus through which it is comparatively easy to walk in 

 spite of their height and density, or it may be herbs of a similar height which do not give 



