276 
THE GUASO NYERO 
[CH. XI 
a kind of sneeze of alarm or curiosity, and stood broad¬ 
side to me, the sun glinting on its handsome coat and 
polished black horns. One of my Kikuyu followers 
packed the skin entire to camp. I had more trouble 
with another oryx, wounding it one evening at three 
hundred and fifty yards, and next morning following the 
trail and, after much hard work and a couple of misses, 
killing it with a shot at three hundred yards. On 
September 2, I found two newly-born oryx calves. 
The colour of the oryx made them less visible than 
hartebeest when a long way off on the dry plains. I 
noticed that whenever we saw them mixed in a herd 
with zebra, it was the zebra that first struck our eyes. 
But in bright sunlight, in bush, I also noticed that the 
zebra themselves were hard to see. 
One afternoon, while skirting the edge of a marsh 
teeming with waders and water-fowl, I came across four 
stately Kavirondo cranes, specimens of which bird the 
naturalists had been particularly anxious to secure. 
They were not very shy for cranes, but they would not 
keep still, and I missed a shot with the Springfield as 
they walked along about a hundred and fifty yards 
ahead of me. However, they were unwise enough to 
circle round me when they rose, still keeping the same 
distance, and all the time uttering their musical call, 
while their great wings flapped in measured beats. To 
shoot flying with the rifle, even at such large birds of 
such slow and regular flight, is never easy, and they 
were rather far off; but with the last cartridge in my 
magazine—the fifth—I brought one whirling down 
through the air, the bullet having pierced his body. It 
was a most beautiful bird, black, white, and chestnut, 
with an erect golden crest, and long, lanceolate grey 
feathers on the throat and breast. 
