In Wildest Africa, Vol. 1

by C. G. Schillings

No one can be surprised that in these solitudes these birds, and their coming and going, are closely associated with our thoughts. It is the less to be wondered at seeing that they are all such eloquent witnesses to the miracle that these weak creatures with their feeble wings twice each year traverse continents and fly safely over seas.

We cannot help thinking of the lark and its spring song at home, when in the wilds of Africa we hear its voice; and it appeals so impressively to the wanderer in the wilderness, that afterwards it has the power of bringing back by its music a picture of the Nyíka in all its characteristic wildness. It is a song that has a character of its own. When I hear it, if it is in the Nyíka, I cannot help thinking of the songster’s frail, weak brethren of Europe, that, following an irresistible impulse, are perhaps at this moment meeting their death on the little island of Heligoland—obedient to the same instinct that sends myriads of their kind each year towards pole or equator. For even as the northern song of the lark awakens the soft, poetic spell of smiling fields, so, too, the mysterious and still deeply veiled spell of the Nyíka can find expression in its wonderful music.

Small, invisible almost, it rises in the air. Soon it is lost to sight in the sky. Then suddenly a song that, though so often heard before, is still a marvel, comes distinctly on the ear, its notes sharply accented and emphasised as if it were close to us. There is a sharp, rhythmical, clapping sound, as if small laths or pieces of whalebone were being rattled together. It comes from that tree right in front of us. No mistake about it seems possible. But the eye searches in vain for the producer of the sound.

Again and again one is deceived in this way. Who could imagine that that little bird far away over there, a hardly perceptible speck on the horizon, is producing this strange music? “Knáck! knáck! knáck!” again, and yet again, it comes to us ringing out loud and clear. Our little invisible songster does not tire of pouring out its strange misleading song. It is a kind of love-song of a species of lark, which was discovered by Fischer some fifteen years ago and bears the name of the naturalist, now long deceased; Mirafra fischeri, Rchw.,[44] is its scientific name. Its clapping and rattling are undoubtedly part of the charm of a journey in certain districts of the Masai-Nyíka.

Even in my tent, in the midst of the comparatively loud noise of the busy camp of my numerous caravan, I can hear the clapping, rattling voice of this lark. Some hundreds of yards away it flies up into the sky, like our own skylark, and hovers about clattering in the air, so loudly and distinctly that if I did not know its character and habits, I would have been continually looking for it close to my tent. It is very hard to quite free oneself from this illusion. One continually thinks that one hears the cry of the bird in one’s immediate neighbourhood, the sound being produced much in the same way as that of the snipe.

And yet another strange voice of a lark resounds in my ears: a melancholy, plaintive, soft sound, till now unknown to me and to most others. All night long its calls and cries resound about my camp. I should never have thought that it was a lark (Mirafra intercedens Rchw.) that thus made itself heard in the night, as our woodlarks do in moonlight nights at home. It was at the cost of much careful research that the discovery was made of what bird produced this song.

And the strange voice of yet another bird is inseparable from my recollections of the wilderness of East Africa. The xerophytic flora of the far-spreading thorny mimosa thickets gives shelter to a privileged member of the bird world, which is thus guarded in safety from all danger amid their thorny boughs and branches. I refer to a peculiar bird, belonging to the group of the Musophagidæ, grey-feathered, green-beaked, long-tailed, and adorned with a crest. This strange fellow roves about restlessly—a bird about as big as a jay, misleading the traveller with his cry in the most curious way. Science calls him Chizaerhis leucogastra, Rüpp.; the German language has given him the name “Lärmvogel” (“noisy bird”).

And he has a perfect right to bear his name. There resounds somewhere near us, and in a way that completely deceives us, now the barking and snarling of a dog, now the bleating of sheep. Following the direction of the sound we look to see what produces it, and we find our bird hopping about nimbly upon the tops of the thorn-trees and acacias, appearing to have no anxiety about the thorny spikes of the branches, in which he makes his home. With a cleverness that borders on the miraculous he makes his way amongst them, protected by them against the attacks of birds or beasts of prey, and in his conscious reliance on the security of his dwelling-place, so to say, mocking at all enemies. So deceptive are his cries that at first, and especially when I was in the neighbourhood of native settlements, I was continually looking everywhere for sheep and their shepherds.

Many other typical bird-voices live in my memory. I hear the peculiar plaintive cry of the large cormorants that are busy with their fishing by the salt lakes of the wilderness, a cry that seems most fitted for these solitudes. The mysterious chattering and chirping of the little swamp-fowl come to my ear from the shallows and the bushes along the banks of silent rivers of the primeval forest, a bird-language so strange that the natives believe the birds are conversing with the fish in the stream. I hear the cackling of the knowing Nile-geese, that seem to be always engaged in conversation; when on the wing, too, a pair of them, in their affectionate fidelity, have always some warning, some reminder of something or other to call out to each other. Where their cry resounds one hears also frequently that of the wonderful, wailing peewit; it has a plaintive and melancholy effect on the mind of the listener. Far different is the noisy outcry of its brightly coloured cousin, a denizen of the thirsty wilderness (Stephanibyx coronatus, Bodd.). Shrill and harsh the voice of the bird rings out, a watch-cry by day and night, and when in bright moonlight nights they fly in flocks over the camp. Swarms of these remarkable birds, the police of the wilderness in feathered uniforms, flutter around the traveller as he approaches. They ruin his attempts to stalk wild animals, and their strident screeches, to which all other animals hearken, haunt him long after, as also the call and cry of the large, yellow-eyed thick-knee, an inhabitant of the loneliest solitudes. But I cannot imagine the low shores of African lakes and the sea-coast without the cry of the widely distributed sandpiper, which has its home in the far north. In winter its low plaintive cry is heard at every step: but even in summer the trained ear can distinguish it here and there. These individual stragglers from the north are thus to be found during all times of the year in this distant country, while the most of their kindred tribe have successfully made their way to the Polar lands, their usual summer breeding-place.