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SAVAGE SUDAN 
potential crime, yet suggested an ornithological problem. 
Simultaneously with the weavers, there also “flighted” 
other armies, obviously of the plover persuasion, and also 
in numbers beyond all arithmetical computation. These 
proved to be ruffs and reeves. But whence do such 
numbers emanate? And where are they bred? I have 
visited some few of the summer haunts of the ruff; a 
hundred pairs may breed here, a thousand elsewhere. 
But here we have them in millions. There must remain 
regions unknown whither these amazing hosts retire to 
nest each spring. Till I saw them thus in the Sudan, no 
suspicion of the extreme abundance of the ruff as a species 
had ever dawned upon me. 
At midday the ruffs resort to the islets and sand-banks 
of the river, and a remarkable anachronism it is, in mid¬ 
winter, to see their hosts split up over a hundred miniature 
battlefields! The ruffs, of course, at this season boast 
none of their nuptial finery ; yet everywhere are champions 
challenging each other, ruffling and fluffing-up in mock 
defiance exactly as is their vernal custom in far-away 
northern lands. Thirty odd years ago I defined this 
phenomenon as “Pseudo-erotism”'—(. Bird-Life of the 
Borders , 1889, pp. 91 and 102-3). 
Eneiicliba 
To us, when we reached Eneikliba, the place was 
nothing more than a camping-ground after a 17-mile ride 
from some other nameless spot. But we discovered thereat 
a wooded swamp that proved well-nigh a bird-paradise. 
Probably it had once formed an ancient channel of 
the river, though now lying several miles inland. En¬ 
closed amidst dense belts of tamarisk and giant sedge 
there lay broad pools of stagnant water, and from their 
foetid surfaces uprose in gnarled fantastic arches the 
roots of forest-trees. An altogether eerie aspect per¬ 
vaded this semi-submerged forest. Its canopy of over- 
