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Updated: May 20, 2025
In such cases, for instance, as that of the scissors-tail tyrant-bird, and its pyrotechnic evening displays, when a number of couples leave their nests containing eggs and young to join in a wild aerial dance: the mad exhibitions of ypecahas and ibises, and the jacanas' beautiful exhibition of grouped wings: the triplet dances of the spur-winged lapwing, to perform which two birds already mated are compelled to call in a third bird to complete the set: the harmonious duets of the oven-birds, and the duets and choruses of nearly all the wood-hewers, and the wing-slapping aerial displays of the whistling widgeons will it be seriously contended that the female of this species makes choice of the male able to administer the most vigorous and artistic slaps?
Fifty yards or so away, in front of the door, a shallow pool had formed in a depression of the hard, sun-baked soil, and as the soft light of the moon fell upon it there came a whirr of wings as a flock of night-roving, spur-winged plover lit upon its margin.
From the ground, which now felt soft, warm, and springy to my naked foot, there came that sweet earthy smell that arises when the land has lain for long, long months under a sky of brass, and all green things have struggled hard to live. As I drew near the hut I saw that the flock of spur-winged plover were still standing or running about the margin of the newly-formed pool.
They are all handsome, the smallest not so large as the English water-hen. In the savannas, too, you will sometimes surprise the snow-white egret, whose back is adorned with the plumes from which it takes its name. Here, too, the spur-winged water-hen, the blue and green water-hen and two other species of ordinary plumage are found.
Then it appeared, an old spur-winged gander, probably the king of the flock, flying so low that it only cleared the cliff edge by about twenty feet, and passed over not more than thirty yards up, an easy shot. Pereira fired, and down it came rather slowly, falling a hundred yards or so behind him, while Retief said: "One for our side."
Occasionally we saw pairs of the stately jabirus, or adjutant-looking marabouts, wading among the shoals, and spur-winged geese, and other water-fowl, but there was scarcely a crocodile or a hippopotamus to be seen. At the end of the first week, an old man called at our camp, and said he would send a present from his village, which was up among the hills.
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