Male and female both work at gathering this material, and every piece is brought up to the tree. How strangely they look as they fly with them from the place where they took them to that where their colony is situated! It seems as if they were carrying away a long, narrow ribbon. The pendent twig having been chosen, the birds begin to turn their leaf-strips over the twig, and to interlace them below in such a way as to enable the finished nest to shed rain. The birds work with the greatest assiduity with both beak and feet, sometimes with the head up, sometimes with the head down. Often I would see one little fellow one minute holding by his feet and working the strips in with his bill, the next suspended by his bill and pushing all together with his feet, then adroitly slipping inside, and by pushing and working with his body giving the nest a round shape. The entrance is the last made, and they are knowing enough to build its mouth down, so that the inside may be sheltered from the rains, which I can assure you pour down in good earnest in these equatorial regions. A few leaves are put inside where the eggs are to be laid.
TIME OF NEST-BUILDING.
Sometimes trees on which these industrious little fellows build are quite killed by the weight of so many nests, and by the space they occupy preventing the regular growth of the branches. The nests are not only used to breed in, but also to live in, and each pair breeds several times a year, raising two young ones in a brood. Of course, with such a rapid increase, they are always needing new nests, so that the building process is going on almost all the time.
The nests looked all alike to my eyes, yet each bird was always able to find its own. But sometimes I noticed a strong fellow trying with might and main to oust one of his weaker brethren from his home, or to drive him from the work he had begun; then there was a downright fight for possession.
They have a foreknowledge of the rainy season evidently, for just before this sets in they are particularly active in building and repairing, and at such a time the village where they have settled is alive with their merry twittering and active bustle.
Of course, during the dry or cold season very little building is going on.
I shall always have a pleasant recollection of these Sycobii, and no one was ever allowed to disturb them at Washington, where I had three or four little trees full of their nests. The natives like to see them round them, and no village is thought to be perfect without them.
CHAPTER XVII.
ON THE OFOUBOU RIVER.—ELEPHANTS BATHING.—PURSUIT THROUGH THE SWAMP.—ESCAPE OF THE ELEPHANTS.
If you could have visited me, you would have found me on the banks of the Ovenga River, at the village of my Bakalai friend Obindji.