The Senegal Pie. 
105 
by later observations on other specimens — a bird as gentle and 
inoffensive in a cage as its French congener is wicked and 
brutal. Sometimes it teases its companions, but without 
malice. The one of which 1 am speaking was on very good 
terms with a Senegal Dove that a negro brought me one day, 
comijlelely stripped of its flight feathers, which 1 put into a 
cage out of charity, as 1 could not release it in the state in 
which it was found. The food of the Pie was very simple — 
meat, grasshoppers and occasionally milk-sop (it refused this 
food if offered too frequently) ; it never accepted any fruit, not 
even banana, and it only touched millet occasionally. Peace 
was only broken on June jStli by the admittance to the cage of a 
Coucal {Cciitropus inonaclius, commonly called Coq de Pagoda) 
a brutal and badly brought up companion, which sought a 
quarrel with the Pie, and was very badly received, but by the 2nd 
of July they were quite good friends, perching side by side, 
and the Pie even offering to feed the other. This, however, 
did not last long, and about the middle of July they commenced 
quarrelling again. These were never very serious, and I 
have always accused the Coucal of commencing them, but they 
increased more and more, until the death of the Coucal on the 
jnd August, 1919. Un August i8th, the Pie travelled without 
any kind of trouble for thirty hours by boat and rail to Cotonou, 
and remained in the same hamper with the Dove mentioned 
before and two green Touracons {Turaciis buffoni). At 
Cotonou the cages were set up in the garden of the hospital, 
and the Pie was not long in attaching himself closely to the 
Touracous. and on the death of one of them, would not quit 
the survivor. The bird stood the uncomfortable journey 
on the " Burgomaster " from the i6th August until the 4th 
October very well, and was installed in the laboratory at Dakar, 
when I left to go to the Soudan. When 1 captured this Pie 
its beak was absolutely black; it gradually became marbled with 
grey blotches, and little by little the hinder part of the beak 
changed to a pretty tint of rose-colour. Some young speci- 
mens that I had in my hands, this year in the Soudan, had from 
their birth two thirds of their beak rose-coloured; two have 
died, and a post mortem showed them to be both males. 
Another that lived had the same character as the one about 
which we have been writing. This Pie lived well together 
