African Game Trails 
133 
ordinary-looking bird, somewhat like a fe¬ 
male 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 barnyard rooster, being over twice 
as long as the rest of the bird, with a down¬ 
ward 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 Heatley’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 extraordinary peculiarity was 
the custom the cocks had of dancing in arti¬ 
ficially made dancing-rings. For a mile and 
a half beyond our camp, down the course of 
the Kamiti, the grassland at the edge of the 
papyrus was thickly strewn with these dan¬ 
cing-rings. Each was about two feet in di¬ 
ameter, sometimes more, sometimes less. A 
tuft of growing grass perhaps a foot high 
was left in the centre. Over the rest of the 
ring the grass was cut off close by the roots, 
and the blades strewn evenly over the sur¬ 
face of the ring. The cock 
bird would then alight in the 
ring and hop up to a height 
of a couple of feet, wings 
spread and motionless, tail 
drooping, and the head usu¬ 
ally thrown back. As he came 
down he might or might not 
give an extra couple of little 
hops. After a few seconds 
he would repeat the motion, 
sometimes remaining almost 
in the same place, at other 
times going forward during 
and between the hops so as 
finally to go completely round 
the ring. As there were many 
scores of these dancing-places 
within a comparatively lim¬ 
ited territory, the effect was 
rather striking when a large 
number of birds were dan¬ 
cing at the same time. As one 
walked along, the impression conveyed by 
the birds continually popping above the 
grass and then immediately sinking back, 
was somewhat as if a man was making peas 
