33 6 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
bird which amongst the Picarians is as remarkable as the large Australian 
Lyrebird is as a huge terrestrial development of Passerine type. It still retains 
in some measure the syndactylous foot though it is obvious that the toes are 
gradually becoming more separated. The species of ground hornbill in British 
Central Africa is Bucorvus caffer. It has black plumage with white pinions to 
the wings. The enormous beak and the small casque above are both black ; 
the bare parts of the face are red but round the eye and on the wattle- 
protuberance of the throat the colour changes to blue in the male and to a 
purplish red in the female. The ground hornbills are great scavengers, 
devouring snakes, offal of all kinds and any reptile of convenient size they 
can get hold of, rats, small birds, and mammals. In spite of their ferocious 
aspect they make the most charming pets, using their huge bills very gently 
and never to my knowledge as a weapon of offence against their human friends. 
Anybody wishing to test this statement of mine should visit the ground 
hornbill presented by me to the Zoological Gardens which has been for some 
time living in the Eastern Aviary. I have had others of these birds and have 
become really attached to them. We always delighted in their quaint ways 
and strong originality. They are, as a rule, well able to take care of themselves, 
but one of these birds which almost ranked next to a human being in the 
opinion of the natives, so much was it a member of our family, preferred to 
sleep at night, no matter what was the weather, on the chimney of the 
Secretary’s house. Unfortunately the roof leading up to the chimney sloped 
gradually and came near to the ground. One night a tiger cat must have 
ascended the roof and seized the bird while asleep, to judge from the traces 
which were left. They are very affectionate to persons whom they know, but 
they will sometimes take a sudden fancy to a stranger and insist on feeding 
him or her with a dreadful piece of offal, the more malodorous the choicer in 
the hornbill’s opinion. They will hardly refuse any form of food and swallow 
most things on trust-—a rash confidence which often leads to their death when 
they are the pets of a European. The natives have a superstitious reverence 
for this bird which they never kill. It usually lives in small flocks or companies. 
In some of the more forested parts of British Central Africa the Trumpeter 1 
hornbills are represented by two species, the well-known Bycanistes cristatus 
(illustrated in my Kilimanjaro book) and B. buccinator, a rather smaller bird 
with a less prominent white casque. The noise made by these hornbills I have 
compared in other books to the braying of an ass or the hoarse raving of a 
grief-stricken woman. It is at times a terribly distressing sound re-echoing 
through the forest. The more savage natives of British Central Africa are 
very fond of using the head of the white casqued hornbill ( B. cristatus) as a 
terror-striking object fixed to their headdress. 
Amongst the kingfishers there are four species of Halcyon all beautifully 
coloured and rather large (these Halcyons are not necessarily found near water 
and subsist on insects, not fish), two of Ceryle (one, C. rudis is a very common 
African kingfisher and is black and white, the other, C. maxima is the largest 
kingfisher known—it is black and white, blue-grey and chestnut), and beautiful 
little birds of the genera Alcedo and Corythornis. 
The rollers are not represented by many species. There are two forms of 
Eurystomus and two of Coracias. The Eurystomus is another gorgeous bird 
for colouring—a combination of chestnut shot with mauve, rose colour, azure- 
blue and purple. 
Bycanistes. 
