132 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
the muscles under the skin. The very young fawns of the 
kongoni seemed to have little fear of a horseman, if he ap¬ 
proached while they were lying motionless on the ground; 
but they would run from a man on foot. 
There were interesting birds, too. Close by the woods 
at the river’s edge, we saw a big black ground hornbill 
walking about, on the lookout for its usual dinner of small 
snakes and lizards. Large flocks of the beautiful Kavirondo 
cranes stalked over the plains and cultivated fields, or flew 
by with mournful, musical clangor. But the most interest¬ 
ing birds we saw were the black whydah finches. The 
female is a dull-colored, ordinary-looking bird, somewhat 
like a female bobolink. The male in his courtship dress is 
clad in a uniform dark glossy suit, and his tail-feathers 
are almost like some of those of a barn-yard rooster, being 
over twice as long as the rest of the bird, with a downward 
curve at the tips. The females were generally found in 
flocks, in which there would often be a goodly number of 
males also, and when the flocks put on speed the males 
tended to drop behind. The flocks were feeding in Heat- 
ley’s grain-fields, and he was threatening vengeance upon 
them. I was sorry, for the male birds certainly have habits 
of peculiar interest. They were not shy, although if we 
approached too near them in their favorite haunts, the 
grassland adjoining the papyrus beds, they would fly off 
and perch on the tops of the papyrus stems. The long 
tail hampers the bird in its flight, and it is often held at 
rather an angle downward, giving the bird a peculiar and 
almost insect-like appearance. But the marked and ex¬ 
traordinary peculiarity was the custom the cocks had of 
dancing in artificially made dancing-rings. For a mile and 
