BEYOND THE SUDD 
287 
to sketch a couple of elephants, I ran into a colony of 
these purple-crowned coucals—most reclusive birds ; yet 
so fearless of man that, skulking - in that dense covert, 
when in sight at all, they were too near to shoot. While 
trying to sketch one, distant 6 yards, suddenly it dived 
under a tangle of elephant-smashed canes and lay sidelong 
on the ground, peering upwards in terror. A kite was 
passing over. Bird-instinct was doubly at fault. That 
coucal feared not man 
(with a gun), and also 
clearly failed to discrim¬ 
inate between Milvus 
which is harmless, and 
Circus which is pre¬ 
eminently dangerous. 
The note of both 
species of coucal is strik¬ 
ing among bird - elo¬ 
quences. So far as 
sounds can be rendered 
in print, it is a repetition 
of “ pop-pop-pop, ’’louder 
at first and increasing 
pan passu alike in black-shouldered Kite 
rapidity of Utterance {Elanus cceruleus — Immature), 
and in descending chro- Shot at Mongaiia. 
matic cadence. Its 
highest development is reached by the white-browed coucal, 
a serenade which everyone with ears must have suffered 
the livelong night at Mombasa. There, this coucal is 
called the “brain-fever bird,” alias the “water-bottle 
bird,” its note not inaptly comparing with the sound of 
water gurgling out of an inverted bottle. The sketches 
of the bird in the act of “bubbling” and that of the 
kite-affrighted coucal are drawn from life. 
The predatory tendencies of the coucal are curious in 
a bird of the cuckoo class. Not only will it pounce upon 
