Selous, too, in discussing lions, in his quiet, practical way, laid very little stress on the dangers of hunting those animals. He said there was little danger of their ever venturing to attack unless wounded, and then the greatest danger was in going into long grass to search for an animal that in all probability would be lying there concealed, and at bay, and ready to spring on an over-hasty pursuer. Selous’s advice was that, “in hunting lions you should try to get a clean clear shot at your quarry, at fairly close quarters, and to shoot to kill with your first shot.” “Don’t attempt snapshots and wild shooting, which only lead to a bad hit, and a dangerous lion at bay to be dealt with.”
The eerie roar of lions was often heard at night outside our camps, or near to the bivouac of a lonely outpost, and sometimes, through the day, they were seen by our outlying pickets; but I only know of three being shot by members of our battalion during our service in East Africa.
BIRD LIFE
I turn now to the bird life of the country. In the bush, in the neighbourhood of water, birds, of various kinds, were often plentiful, and were remarkable, as a rule, for their brilliant plumage. But they were seldom conspicuous in numbers in the open, for, as a rule, they kept closely within the cover of the bush and jungle grass; and on this account I have often heard unobservant men remark on how little bird life they saw during the campaign in East Africa. Their unobtrusiveness, too, was added to by the fact that very few African birds are songsters.
I think the bird most commonly seen throughout the campaign was the Red-eyed Turtle Dove (Streptopelia semitorquata), and their soft cooing in the quiet evenings was certainly the outstanding note of bird life in the country. It is a truly African sound—a sound which one who has heard it will always associate with African fantasy—and which sometimes strikes the ear as most pleasant and soothing, and, at other times, haunts you with its persistent hint of native sadness.
A more remarkable call, but only heard in certain localities, was the strange bottle-bubbling echoing call of the Lark-heeled Cuckoo—a largish partridge-barred brown bird with a long tail—which was usually uttered at dark, or through the night, by a lone bird perched somewhere on the topmost twig of an outstanding bush or tree, sending his soft note-clear call out over the ocean of misty leaf-tops; where it would be picked up and responded to by another like sentinel at some other distant signal-post.
The most common bird to enter our encampments was the White-necked Raven, a bird similar in habit and colour to the British Rook, but with a large white mark on the nape of the neck. He was the chief scavenger of our camps, though, sometimes, he was ably aided by the Egyptian Kite, one, or a pair, of which species was commonly with us.
Common varieties of the neat little mouse-like Waxbills were, on occasions when we were near to permanent habitations, the only “sparrows” to visit camp.
In odd hours, when the chance occurred, I, and one or two others who became interested, collected some specimens of bird life, chiefly with catapult and trap, in the absence of better weapons, and, notwithstanding the difficulties of storage and transport of the skins, at the end of the campaign had secured the specimens below recorded; which, along with a collection of butterflies, eventually, by purchase, passed into the magnificent collection in Lord Rothschild’s museum at Tring, where such splendid scientific research in world-wide zoology is being extensively and actively prosecuted.
The correct nomenclature of all species has been very kindly formulated by Dr. E. J. O. Hartert, Director of the Tring Museum.