brown bustard, so common in the south, is the only representative of the
turkey tribe that I have seen here. Black and white is a very common
bird colouring; black crows with white collars follow our camps and
bivouacs to pick up scraps, and the brown fork-tailed kite hawks for
garbage and for the friendly lizard too, in the hospital compound. One
night, as I lay in my tent looking to the moon-lit camp, Fritz, our
little ground squirrel that lived beneath the table of the mess tent,
met an untimely fate from a big white owl. A whirr of soft owl wings to
the ground outside my tent, a tiny squeak, and Fritz had vanished from
our compound too.

Vultures of many kinds dispute with lion and hyaena for the carrion of
dead ox or mule beside the road of our advance. King vultures in their
splendour of black, bare red necks and tips of white upon their wings,
lesser breeds of brown carrion hawks and vultures attend our every camp.
Again the vulture is not so common as in South Africa, for here it is
blind in this dense bush and has to play a very subsidiary part to the
scavenging of lions and hyaenas. Down by the swamps one evening we shot
a vulture that was assisting a moribund ox to die. True we did not mean
to kill him, for we owe many debts of gratitude to vultures; but, to my
surprise, my native boy seemed greatly pleased. Lifting the big black
tail he showed me the white soft feathers beneath, and by many signs
appeared to indicate that these feathers were of great value. Then I
looked again, and it was a marabou stork. My boy, who had been with
marabou and egret poachers in the swamps and rice-fields of the lower
Rufigi, knew the value of these snowy feathers.