I think it is rather a pity that no naturalist has studied the birds of
German East Africa in the intimate and friendly spirit that many men
have done at home. It has been said that the bright plumage of Central
African birds is given them as compensation for the charm of song that
is a monopoly of the European bird. That this is the case in the damp
forests and swamps and reed beds along the Rufigi and other big rivers,
there is no doubt. Gaudy parrots and iridescent finches flash through
the foliage of trees along the Mohoro river, monkeys slide down the
ropes formed by parasitic plants that hang from the tree branches, to
dip their hands in the water to drink; only to flee, chattering to the
tree-tops, as they meet the gaze of apparently slumbering crocodiles.
Great painted butterflies flit above the beds of lilies that fringe the
muddy lagoons, the hippopotamus wallows lazily in the warm sunlit
waters. Here, it is true, is the Equatorial Africa of our schoolboy
dreams; and the birds have little but their glittering plumage to
recommend them.
But we are apt to forget that the greater portion of Tropical Africa,
certainly all that is over five hundred feet above the sea, which
constitutes the greater part of the country with the exception of the
coast region, is not at all true to the picture that most of us have in
our minds. For the character of the interior is vastly different: great
rolling plains of yellow grass and thorn scrub, with the denser foliage
of deciduous trees along the river-banks. Here, indeed, you may find
sad-coloured birds that are gifted with the sweetest of songs. In the
bed of the Morogoro River lives a warbler who sings from the late
afternoon until dusk, and he is one of the very few birds that have that
deep contralto note, the "Jug" of the nightingale. And there are little
wrens with drab bodies and crimson tails that live beside the dwellings
of men and pick up crumbs from the doors of our tents, and hunt the rose
trees for insects. In the thorn bushes of higher altitudes are grey
finches that might have learnt their songs beside canary cages. The
African swallows, red headed and red backed, have a most tuneful little
song; they used to delight our wounded men in hospital at Handeni when
they built their nests in the roofs of this one-time German jail, and
sang to reward us for the open windows that allowed them to feed their
broods of young.
In the mealie fields are francolins in coveys, very like the red-legged
partridge in their call, though in plumage nearer to its English
brother. There, too, the ubiquitous guinea fowl, the spotted "kanga"
that has given us so many blessed changes of diet, utters his strident
call from the tops of big thorn trees. The black and white meadow lark
is here, but the "khoran" or lesser bustard of South Africa, that
resembles him so much in plumage on a much larger scale, is absent. The
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.