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CH. XIII] SNAKES, BIRDS, ETC. 
There were a good many poisonous snakes. I killed 
a big puff-adder with thirteen eggs inside it; and we 
also killed a squat, short-tailed viper, beautifully 
mottled, not eighteen inches long, but with a wide, flat 
head and a girth of body out of all proportion to its 
length; and another very poisonous and vicious snake, 
apparently of colubrine type, long and slender. The 
birds were an unceasing pleasure. White wagtails and 
yellow wagtails walked familiarly about us within a few 
feet, wherever we halted and when we were in camp. 
Long-tailed crested colys, with all four of their red toes 
pointed forward, clung to the sides of the big fruits at 
which they picked. White-headed swallows caught 
flies and gnats by our heads. There were large plantain 
eaters, and birds like small jays with yellow wattles 
round the eyes. There were boat-tailed birds, in colour 
iridescent green and purple, which looked like our 
grakles, but were kin to the bulbuls ; and another bird, 
related to the shrikes, with bristly feathers on the rump, 
which was coloured like a red-winged blackbird, black 
with red shoulders. Vultures were not plentiful, but 
the yellow-billed kites, true camp scavengers, were 
common and tame, screaming as they circled overhead, 
and catching bits of meat which were thrown in the air 
for them. The shrews and mice which the naturalists 
trapped around each camping-place were kin to the 
species we had already obtained in East Africa, but in 
most cases there was a fairly well-marked difference ; 
the jerbilles, for instance, had shorter tails, more like 
ordinary rats. Frogs with queer voices abounded in 
the marshes. Among the ants was one arboreal kind, 
which made huge nests, shaped like beehives, or rather 
like big grey bells, in the trees. Near the lake, by 
the way, there were Goliath beetles, as large as small 
rats. 
