THE ATHI RIVER 
213 
VIS-A-VIS. 
midday siesta on the veld—some quite undesirable, as 
scorpions and great liook-clawed millipedes half-a-foot 
long; others curious, as the mantis, infinite stick-insects, 
rhinoceros beetles, and assorted 
Coleoptera in various sizes, with 
ants and hairy spiders and other 
quaint forms. They may be harm¬ 
less—or not; but, being unknown, 
are apt to cause a passing qualm 
when discovered on one’s person. 
For instance, it must give a chill 
suddenly to meet the cold green 
eye of a great lizard steadfastly 
surveying one from a crevice not 
a foot away. One day, in a grove 
by the Athi, a reiterated snap, 
snap, arrested attention, and there, 
pressed upright against a grey 
trunk, sat the tiny grey owl whose 
portrait is here rudely reproduced. 
Hen-harriers, both the blue males 
and “ ring-'tails,” quartered the open 
veld in pairs, and on burnt ground 
crowds of white storks feasted on 
singed grasshoppers and locusts. With 
them were others, smaller and of darker 
plumage, that I at first took to be 
black storks. They were, however, 
Ciconia abdimii. Black kites (Milvus 
korschun) abounded up to mid- 
February, when they withdrew, leav¬ 
ing only their yellow-billed cousin, 
M. cegyptiacus, to scavenge around 
our camps. 
The driest arid plain formed a 
for four waders, to wit—the Asiatic 
ringed plover, dunlin and pratincole. 
The last-named in bands of thirty or forty would 
spring close by, and, after a short flight, all plump 
SCOPS CAPENSIS. 
winter home 
dotterel, the 
