Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  African Game Trails Theodore Roosevelt.

  Many writers have observed the strange behaviour of the Greater Honeyguide. Here is one account.

  I have been asked in England if it be true that the honey-guide will lead up to game, and yield to the temptation to say a word about this curious little bird – the indicator indicator of science, the ndegi ya myusi (bird of honey) of the black man. The honey-guide is about the size of a skylark, dull greenish-grey all over, save for a touch of bright yellow on the neck, and the two outermost tail feathers, which are white, and show distinctly when the bird is on the wing. There are four or five species of indicator, but only one acts as guide. They are closely allied to the cuckoos, and, like them, have the toes set, two forward and two back; like them they place their eggs in the nests of other birds; also, like cuckoos, they are insectivorous.

  The guide is an expected visitor to camp. If he has not come flying across the plain to join the safari, he arrives and hovers round, to keep up his chattering call as soon as the tents are pitched, or within half an hour. It always interests the new-comer to observe the behaviour of the boys towards the honey-guide. They take no notice of him till the necessary work is done, and then, in the most casual, matter-of-fact way, a few of them collect bucket, axe and firebrand to set off, whistling to the bird as you might to your dog. It is this for which the honey-guide has been waiting; forthwith he takes wing and with dipping flight speeds away to a tree perhaps 100 yards off, where he awaits the boys. I am afraid they try his patience, for they never hurry; they know the guide will wait. They reach the tree, and the honey-guide flies off to another, and thus he pilots them by easy stages to their destination. As he draws near it his flights are shorter, till at length he flits from bough to bough, when the boys know the bees’ nest is at hand. The chattering never ceases from the moment of the bird’s arrival till the nest is taken. As a rule it is soon discovered and robbed of its honey, the boys appearing quite unaffected by the stings.

  A Game Ranger’s Note Book A. B. Percival.

  The flight of the quelia.

  It is only in recent years that Quelea quelea has acquired its reputation as the most numerous and also the most destructive bird in the world – a kind of avian locust….

  My first introduction to this bird was in 1952 from a fisheries launch on Lake Victoria. We were cruising close off-shore where a belt of forest came to the water’s edge, when suddenly from out of the canopy appeared a cloud-like swarm of little birds, flying rapidly over the trees in a compact body. It was as though, once they had assembled in formation, an invisible elastic envelope encompassed them from without, to exert some intangible pressure on the whole flock so as to compress the birds into the smallest space compatible with flight. Meanwhile, each individual maintained the necessary flying room and in some miraculous way the several birds seemed to be evenly distributed within the flock. Thus, while each kept apart from its neighbours in a sort of aerial territory, the group as a whole moved like a compact animated ball.

  A remarkable feature of this exhibition was the speed of flight and precision of movement. The congregation, which comprised some thousands of individuals, rose and swung and turned as a unit. There appeared to be no leader: there were no stragglers in this rolling, surging, plunging sphere. As we watched, the birds continued on a course parallel with the shore, and then it was that the astonishing thing happened, for from out of three trees – giants standing high above the rest – there rose three more bird-clouds, each in turn joining and being absorbed by the original group as it passed over their perching place, so that by successive increments the speeding ball of wings merely increased in size without changing shape. The whole flock then rose high and out over the lake, the specks within the mass turning and twisting as waterlogged particles might move in a glass globe. Sometimes the globe itself would be distorted as an oval, or would open and close like a concertina, but always to return to its proper spherical shape. On another occasion when we were perhaps half-a-mile off-shore the bird-cloud lifted from the trees like smoke such as might be caused by a heavy explosion. The mob of birds moved over the lake. As the individuals wheeled and turned in perfect unison, the appearance of the flock changed and changed again – at one instant darkening as the innumerable silhouettes banked over to be seen in broadside view, at the next the birds would wheel away and momentarily vanish as if vaporized, to reappear again in clear relief. The hurrying, pulsating globe then veered off towards the trees, and could no more be seen, except for an instant when in a final evolution all the wings simultaneously caught the sunlight.

  The quelia, or Sudan dioch, became a menace to crops second only to the locust. In the 1950s, control measures included blowing up the roosts in bushes. A single explosion could kill over half a million birds.

  Mutual aid.

  According to Herodotus: “The crocodile is in the habit of lying with its mouth open, facing the western breeze: at such time the Trochilos goes into his mouth and devours the leeches. This benefits the crocodile, who is pleased, and takes care not to hurt the Trochilos.” The identity of the Trochilos was much debated in the last century. Among modern ornithologists, and despite the observations of reliable witnesses, there has been a tendency to dismiss the story as a myth.

  In Uganda the Spurwing Plover (Hoplopterus spinosus) is the reptile’s constant companion on all the favoured basking grounds, and may be seen running on, flitting over or standing close beside the sprawled bodies. Crocodiles immediately respond to their shrill alarm call – “quick-quick-quick”, which is sufficient to alert the whole congregation and to start a stampede to the water. Another commensal is the Common Sandpiper. These waders run up to a crocodile as soon as it has hauled-out on to the bank, and will systematically work round the body in quest of ectoparasites….

  On the lower reaches of the Nile the crocodile’s companion was the Egyptian Plover (Pluvianus aegyptius). The German naturalist A. E. Brehm, who travelled in Egypt and the Sudan in the 1850s, says of this plover: “Without the slightest hesitation it runs around on a crocodile as if it were just a bit of green lawn, pecks at the leeches that are bleeding the reptile, and even has the courage to take parasites adhering to the gums of its gigantic friend. I have seen this on several occasions”. Confirmation of this account is given by Colonel Meinertzhagen, who in the Sudan watched the plover perch on the jaw of a crocodile, inspecting and pecking at something in the mouth. On the Kafue River in Zambia, the same role is played by the Blacksmith Plover (H. armatus).

  Looking at Animals Hugh B. Cott.

  Bird watching beside the Suam river, north-west Kenya.

  Although the days are too hot for any vigorous exercise, and lotus eating from about eleven in the morning until five o’clock is most desirable, it is never dull. At the first flush of saffron above the eastern peaks Egyptian geese call as they go by to some pool above. Then the doves start and the hammerheads’ melancholy whistle. After that little Grant francolins fill every thicket with a strident chatter, shrikes start their cool bell-like notes, somewhere the gay little dancing barbet taps out his staccato song while he dances with his mate side by side upon a low thorn branch. Blue starlings flash in flocks with raucous voices – their assembly should be called anything but a “murmuration”. Soon it is light enough to see the markings, even on the little red waxbills. Still, while sitting with a kikoi round one’s waist, the moment comes to get the field-glasses out to watch the tiny sunbirds, or the carmine-breasted shrike in the bushes, or the monkeys across the river preparing to risk descent to drink, or the old baboon troupe-leader scoop out the sand until he finds sub-surface water closer to the trees than the river. Like the warriors in Canaan they watch as they drink from their hands. All day long the pageant of bird-life in incredible variety goes on. Rollers and bee-eaters, turacos and hornbills and weaver-birds of every colour. Close to the river the fishing-birds take over. Noblest of all is the fish eagle with his white chest and melancholy cry. He claims the
best meat for himself, then the tawny eagle and the kites, and last the vultures are allowed if the corpse is big enough. The speckled kingfisher is a pretty angler. First the kestrel hovers, then plummets into the water and then a tiny fish is in his beak as he rises nearly as vertically as he dived. Perhaps for sheer speed the brown-shirt crested hammerhead is the winner. Awkward, looking like an old brown dominie, he waits on a near-vertical wet rock beside a low cascade. As a fishlet flashes down the waterfall so his beak darts and the fingerling is gobbled almost before it knows what ate it….

  Just before night falls can be a magic moment. Sitting quiet with a glass in hand, a herd of waterbuck will go by like cautious ghosts to the river’s edge. Egyptian geese will fly talking across the last sunset bars and the hammerhead goes mournfully to bed. Soon the sky is pricked with stars. Orion lies sideways on his sworded hip and the pointers of the Plough show where the Pole Star lies behind our Globe.

  A Knot of Roots Earl of Portsmouth.

  Fish

  On the coral reef.

  We swam through deep valleys, which often led into caverns, and we peeped into dimly lit tunnels, out of whose depths coral fish emerged, inquisitive and puzzled by our monstrous bulk; they had good reason for their surprise, since under water everything looks twice its natural size.

  We saw fish resembling red striped porcupine when swimming, which changed their quills to feathery wings while hovering like butterflies close to a coral. Some, like golden boxes dotted with spots of blue, had cow-like horns above their eyes; some were of deepest blue, recalling seas, with yellow maps of Africa drawn upon their flattened sides; some looked like coloured chess-boards; some like zebras; some had masks and trailed their elongated fins like floating veils between them; some puffers bloated their balloons and threw up quills like hedgehogs in defence; some thrust up an inch-long knife behind the dorsal fin, in fear; some lay out flat upon the floor, like giant sole, well camouflaged amongst the shifting sand; there were the buried clams, their mouths a deadly trap, just showing above ground; the deadly poisonous stone fish, whose puff adder markings were concealed by bright red fringes and which kept so still against a coral rock, except for amber-coloured eyes, which followed every move and gave the fish away; then there were crayfish with their sharp hooked armour; however threatening they looked they were far the easiest to shoot. They waited stupidly, half hidden under rocks, for the harpoon to penetrate their shell, between the eyes. Their long thin antennae floated at alert, but rarely warned in time to let the fish escape. The sea anemones, which seemed to us a mass of lovely flowers, were fatal to small organisms, which swam between their ever-moving tentacles. Luckily the poison rays were always quicker than we and shot off long before we could detect their blue-spotted shapes hidden in the sand.

  Born Free Joy Adamson.

  Insects

  Inimical insects.

  The great armies of soldier ants, locally known by the name of siafu, cannot fail at some time or other to obtrude themselves on the notice of the resident in Africa. They will suddenly invade a house, built of wood and iron, penetrate behind the lining boards and clear out white ants and every other insect. Any rats will temporarily evacuate their quarters; nothing can withstand them. Luckily they usually disappear after a stay of a day or two. Native hunters say that this ant is the only thing an elephant is really afraid of, for it is apprehensive of these pugnacious little creatures penetrating its trunk, and they allege that cases have been known where this has occurred, when the elephant went mad with pain and beat its head against a tree until it died. This may or may not be true, but anyone who has had experience of a mass attack from siafu will consider the story to be plausible.

  They travel about the country in columns which are often as long as 200 yards. The workers march four or five abreast; and parallel with the column, but a short distance away, march a larger kind, having much bigger mandibles, these are, it is believed, the males. If a stick is inserted into the column it temporarily breaks up, and the ants rush around seeking to attack the cause of disturbance.

  Much has to be learnt about their life history, but their pugnacity does not encourage research. Their nests are in the ground, generally near water and, just before the rains break, they appear to move to higher quarters, for they seem to sense an approaching change in weather. If one of their columns is observed at this season, it will be seen that many of the workers are carrying eggs….

  Luckily the bite of a siafu does not cause any appreciable irritation once the insect is removed, but it is not a thing which can be stoically endured, and the grip of the ant is so tenacious that he often allows himself to be torn in half rather than loose his hold.

  Kenya: From Chartered Company to Crown Colony C. W. Hobley.

  The drier grasslands sprout tall, chimney-like excrescences which impart a weird, surrealist appearance to the landscape. These are termite castles created by what are often, and wrongly, called white ants.

  Termites are not, as we might think, related to other social insects such as bees, wasps and ants. This mis-named “white ant” is not an ant at all: it belongs in a group of its own, more closely related to cockroaches than to ants. They have no forms which develop from unfertilized eggs, as worker bees do. Instead of starting life as a larva, the young termite hatches directly from the egg into a nymph, an immature copy of the adult.

  Some termites are actually able to eat wood with the help of minute single-celled organisms in their stomachs. The so-called “gut flora” produce chemicals which break down the tough plant fibres and render them digestible for the termites. Other termites like Macrotermes bellicosus (the “big warlike termite”) have no such helpers. Their answer is to become agrarians and cultivate their own food.

  Underground, in the heart of the lightless chambers, Macrotermes shapes the earth into convoluted hanging gardens seeded with the spores of a particular fungus species and fertilized with half-digested regurgitated wood pulp. The little mushroom-like growths which flourish in the dark are the real food of Macrotermes.

  In the rains when the soil is soft and moist, a caste of males and females becomes sexually mature and sprouts wings. One evening, after a heavy shower, workers open tunnels to the surface and the winged emissaries fly up towards the failing light. In the darkness they drop to earth again and having shed their wings perfunctorily, males and females form pairs and run off in tandem to seek a suitable site for the beginnings of a new nest. Those two creatures are all that is necessary to form a new colony; the female even has in her gut a minute piece of fungus to be regurgitated and become the nucleus of their fungus gardens.

  Of the untold thousands that flew from the one nest only a minute fraction will survive the depredations of numerous predators and live to establish another colony. And the thousands that die – are they wasted? The answer must be, no. Termites are extremely tasty fare to predators, and on their nuptial flight they are at considerable risk as they flutter in silhouette against the evening sky. But there are so many of them; probably more than enough to fill the local predator population who cannot cope with these seasonal excesses, since their numbers are controlled by the average amount of prey available all year round. The enormous sacrifice ensures that some termites survive; and in any event, all the material will be recycled via bird droppings or genet dung and will be used again one day by termites. Thus for the ecosystem the nuptial flight of the termite ends rain of nutrients.

  Pyramids of Life John Reader and Harvey Croze.

  Tricking the termites.

  During the dry weather a mysterious rattling sound, explained as “beating for dudus” (insects), may be heard every evening and all day long on Sundays. When we investigated we came upon a little party of boys sitting round an ant-heap. The spot they had chosen could not properly be called an ant-heap at all, as it was a flat, very hard spot, a few feet across, with several holes like narrow shafts, three or four inches in diameter, going down deep into the ground. The boys were provided with
a pitcher of water, some green leaves, and a quantity of puddled mud made of blue river clay.

  They took handfuls of mud and shaped it into short tubes, which they stood on end over the holes. Each tube was then lined with a big leaf, water was trickled down inside, and a flat cake of the clay placed on each as a cover. Every shaft was moistened and covered in this way, and then a boy took up two short sticks and started beating them rhythmically on a third stick, and they explained that the white ants below saw the water coming down the chimneys and said one to the other, “It is raining! See the water!” Then they heard the sticks beating and said, “We can hear the rain beating on the ground!” So they all came up to see. And sure enough they did! Not at once, for the beating of the sticks went on without pause, and after about half an hour a boy raised one of the lids and peeped inside. Nothing! But a couple of minutes after, when he opened another, it was swarming with white ants, all with wings. Instantly the boys fell on them, cramming them by handfuls into their mouths and spitting out the wings; other tubes filled, and when they could eat no more they packed the ants into bits of americani (cloth) and corners of their blankets to take home. They say the ants are marfuta (fat), and very good for men, but they know no moderation and often become ill from a surfeit.

  The Youngest Lion Eva Bache.

  Flies by the cupful.