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APPENDIX C 
where the occupants were singing, dancing, and playing their crude 
stringed instruments. We ran into a hunch of five of these foxes, and 
got four of them, none of which was the young of the year. After 
shooting one, we would search about in the dark until the light picked 
up another pair of eyes, and in this way we kept circling about close to 
the village. One fox was killed within two hundred yards of the rail¬ 
road station, and at dusk one evening I saw a fox emerge from a burrow 
close to a group of natives, and scamper across the flat. The stomachs 
of several were examined, and found to contain about a quart of termites 
and other insects. 
Giant Shrew (Crocidura nyanscz). Giant shrews were common at Lake 
Naivasha, where most of them were caught in the thick reeds and rank 
grass bordering the lake. One was taken at Nyeri and another on 
Mount Kenia, at an altitude of 10,700 feet. They seemed to be as much 
diurnal as nocturnal, and were captured in traps baited with rolled oats, 
dried apple, and raw meat. They inhabited the dense parts of the 
thickets, where the foliage had to be parted, and a clearing made for the 
traps. These localities were the home of a large rat, and many of the 
rats captured were decapitated or partly eaten by animals that probably 
were giant shrews. A shrew captured alive was very ferocious, and 
would seize upon anything that came within its reach. When fully 
excited, and lifted into the air by its tail, it would emit a loud, shrill, 
chirping note. 
Short-tailed Shrew {Surdisorex norai). Collected between altitudes of 10,000 
and 12,100 feet on Mount Kenia. With the exception of those collected 
at 10,000 feet, where they were trapped in open grassy and brushy parks 
in the bamboo, most of them were taken in runways of Otomys, and all 
of those taken at 12,100 were caught in such runways in tall marsh 
grass. 
Elephant Shrew (.Elephantulus pulcher). Both diurnal and nocturnal. While 
riding over the country I frequently saw them darting through the 
runways from one thicket to another. Nearly every clump of bushes 
and patch of rank vegetation in the Sotik and Naivasha districts was 
traversed with well-worn trails, used by different species of Mns and 
shrews. The elephant shrews were most common on the dry flats, where 
clumps of fibre plants grew, and their trails usually led into some thorny 
thicket and finally entered the ground. 
Yellow-Winged Tree Bat {Lama front). These large semi-diurnal bats lived 
in the thorn-tree groves and thick bush along the Athi, South Guaso 
Nyero, and Nile rivers, where we found them more or less common, and 
at the latter place abundant. At the two first named places they were 
almost always found in pairs, hanging from the thorn-trees by their feet, 
their wings folded before their faces. When disturbed, they fly a short 
distance and alight ; but when we returned to the spot a few minutes 
later, they would often he found in the same tree from which they had 
been started. On the Nile at Rhino Camp, and in suitable places all 
along the trail between Kampala and Butiaba, it was not unusual to find 
three and four in a single thorn-tree. On dark days, and once in the 
bright sunlight, I saw these bats flying about and feeding. At evening 
they always appeared an hour or so before the sun went down. Their 
method of feeding was quite similar to that of our fly-catching birds. 
They would dart from the branches of a thorn-tree, catch an insect, then 
return and hang head downward in the tree while they ate the morsel. 
One was captured with a young one clinging to it head downward, its 
feet clasped about its mother’s neck. 
