Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 6 (1902).djvu/81

Rh leaves its hold. This they repeat till the snake is dead. If the reptile advances on them, they place both wings in front of them, completely covering their heads and most vulnerable parts." When the snake is dead they proceed to bite it between their two mandibles throughout its whole length, probably dislocating the snake's backbone. It is then swallowed head first, and, if the snake is a large one, the bird will go about with half of it trailing out from between its jaws. Tortoises, too, are much relished. In this case all the flesh, including the head and limbs, are neatly picked away from the unhappy reptile, leaving the shell clean and entire without damage.

The call is a kind of "boom boom," constantly repeated until it becomes quite wearisome. Mr. Ayres states that it can be heard at a great distance, under favourable circumstances as far as two miles. My experience—which, however, is confined to a bird in captivity—does not quite confirm this; but the sound, though by no means loud, has a remarkable penetrating power. The call of the female is similar, but is pitched a tone above that of the male, and is usually heard in answer to him. When "booming" the red pouch under the throat is generally, though not invariably, distended with air; this action can be performed at will. Mr. Layard lays great stress on the evil stench emitted by this bird, but I have not found this at all noticeable in the case of the individual observed by myself.

A complete account of the nesting habits of the Brom-vogel has not, so far as I am aware, been yet given, but it doubtless builds a nest on the flat crown of a tree where the trunk has decayed away, or else in a hole in a tree. Dr. Stark visited a nest at Boschfontein, near Balgowan, in Natal; it was in a hole some forty feet up in the trunk of a large tree growing in a small piece of thick bush. The birds were stated to nest annually in the same place, and Mr. Hutchinson, who showed him the nest, believed that several females laid in the same hole, as more than one pair of birds visited the young ones. The Brothers Woodward also found a nest built of sticks in a large tree standing by itself on the high flat lands over the Ifafa River, in Natal; in it were two young birds, one much larger than the other.

An egg, now in the South African Museum, taken by Colonel Bowker, at Old Morley, a mission station in Tembuland, is a