A SHRIKE (LANIUS CAUDATUS, Cab.) ON THE LOOK-OUT FROM THE HIGH BOUGHS OF AN ACACIA. ITS CRIES WHEN IT SEES A HUNTER ON THE MOVE OFTEN WARN THE ANIMALS HE IS STALKING.
High over my head the voice of the pretty avocet (Recurvirostra avocetta, L.), one of the most charming forms of the bird world known to us, transports me by magic to the distant and mournful lakes of the Masailand wilderness. What the dwarf bustards (Otis gindiana, Oust.) keep calling out to each other with their continually repeated “Rágga-ga-rágga” is not to be discovered. But their cry, which has kept the fancy of the natives busy since olden days, is as inseparably associated with regions on which the grass grows high, as the voices and cries of the sandfowl, the francolins, and, above all, the jarring outcries of the guinea-fowl, on the velt. All the manifold voices of doves, cuckoos, parrots, hornbills, bee-eaters, shrikes, orioles, starlings, finches, weaver-birds, sylvians, and the rest, calling, exulting, rejoicing, uttering cries of alarm or complaint, have woven themselves into my recollections of happy days and days of toil.
Thus there still rings in my ear the triple note of the yellowish green bulbul (Pycnonotus layardi, Gurn.), which, like our sparrow, is present everywhere, till one almost tires of it. Most curious is the friendly play which the handsomely coloured glossy starling (Spreo superbus, Rüpp.) carries on with a weaver-bird (Dinemellia dinemelli, [Hartl.] Rüpp) in flights like those of our sparrows. It comes back to me all the more vividly when I recall the notes uttered by these two birds, which, though such close friends and taking such delight in each other’s company, are so distantly related. The curious warbling of the honey-finder (Indicator indicator, Gm.), which often guides the man who follows it to a wild bees’ nest, also easily makes a permanent impression on the ear of the traveller.
And there are many other bird-voices that delight any one who takes pleasure in sound. When silvery moonbeams streamed over the camp, the night-jars (especially Caprimulgus fossei [Verr.] Hartl.) buzzed and hummed forth their strange song everywhere around. No matter how remote and desolate the wilderness in which the traveller laid down his head to rest, these goat-suckers were to be heard. Their voice makes a strong impression on us even in our own country in the lonely woods, but its effect is much more striking, on the far-off equatorial velt. With noiseless soft beating of its wings the bird comes gliding past us; its wings almost touch us. When it pours forth its song, its monotonous sleepy song, I could listen to it for hours. In the daytime it starts up suddenly from the ground here and there in front of you, uttering the feeblest of cries, that it is impossible to represent. In the next instant it vanishes like some huge moth, and even the sharpest eye cannot distinguish it amongst the dry branches and leaves, or clinging close to the rocky ground. The song of the night-jar is among my most vivid recollections of the bird-voices of Africa.
In the neighbourhood of water, wherever it may be, and in the thick undergrowth, wherever the African wilderness extends, you hear the call and cry of a peculiar bird-voice. It rings out through the stillness with a deep double piping note, that impresses itself in a lasting way on the ear. It is the voice of the handsome organ-shrike (Laniarius æthiopicus, Gm.). These shrikes, which mate permanently, always utter this note in such quick succession, one of the pair after the other, that at first you think you are listening to only a single bird. This beautiful bird-note indicates the proximity of water, and thus it has acquired quite a special significance in these countries.
Finally there is no sound from the throat of a bird that I call to mind so plainly, or so continually, as the song of the African nightingale (Erithacus africanus, [Fschr.] Rchw.). I have very frequently heard this beautiful song during the months of our winter, in many districts round Kilimanjaro. When I heard it unexpectedly for the first time, I was most deeply moved by it. Ten years ago I heard it during a day’s march in the wooded gullies of the great volcanic mountain, and it was most clear and full and beautiful. I never expected thus to hear this northern bird-voice in the tropics. Later on, when I was camped at a considerable altitude in the primeval forests of Kilimanjaro, I was saluted with the cries of northern migratory birds, that, wheeling round the mountain, seemed to be flying over its everlasting snowfields. It was a strange coincidence in those Christmas days, the song of the northern nightingale, and those northern birds of passage on the wing under the equatorial sun! It is worth noting that this voice of the nightingale was the only genuine northern bird-song that I ever heard in Africa. That our nightingale also sometimes breeds there is indicated by the discovery of its nest by the late Dr. Fischer. But the problem of the extraordinary identity in character of this nightingale with its northern sister still awaits solution. Many difficult observations will have to be made in order to investigate it thoroughly.
What a contrast to this song of our northern nightingale is presented by the voices of the hyenas and jackals, the strange cry uttered by the leopard, all the sounds emitted by the antelopes, and finally the indescribably startling, harsh-sounding bellow of the crocodile!
But neither individually nor collectively can the effect of all these voices be expressed in words. They associate themselves with the forms of a flora untouched by the hand of man, and the unceasing throb of animal life. I think of them all together as a theatre of nature now flooded with sunlight, now in the mysterious darkness of night, or with glistening moonbeams playing over it. What impresses one so much is not merely these individual voices, but the way in which all the myriad voices mingle in one mighty chorus.
If this symphony of nature is to be written down, it must be by some master who will combine in one marvellous melody these musical utterances that are so mighty and impressive, so full of mystery and charm, and so often dying away in the deepest and most delicate cadences. None of these tones should be missing, no note of them all should be struck out.
I should like to set in contrast with this mighty primeval harmony of the wilderness the sounds and voices of the modern industrial world, which gradually and unwittingly we take to be something natural. He who would feel all its greatness and perfection must keep himself far away for weeks and months from the screaming whistle he hears on the railway, and the howling siren of a steamship.