File:On safari - big game hunting in British East Africa, with studies in bird-life (1908) (14750693362).jpg

Identifier: onsafaribiggameh00chaprich (find matches)
Title: On safari : big game hunting in British East Africa, with studies in bird-life
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Chapman, Abel, 1851-1929
Subjects: Hunting -- Africa, British East Birds -- Africa, British East Africa, British East -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Longmans, Green London : Edward Arnold
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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re not tufted asin the bush-pigs. On the following morning I enjoyed my first sightof an oryx, a lone bull moving along the lower slopes;but though I followed him for hours, far into the stonyhills, never got within half-a-mile. In case the factmay possess scientific interest, I should record meetingwith a hedgehog during this stalk. I would not havenoticed it among long grass had it not loudly resentedmy proximity. In size it resembled our British species,and its spines were of a uniform brown. Well I knewthat my duty to zoology involved taking that beastalong; but, in the midst of a laborious stalk, it wasimpossible to carry that spiky specimen. Cactus andbarbed thorn are torment enough, without having ahedgehog in ones pocket. The bushy prairies here-abouts swarmed with a species of short-eared owl, verydark in colour, probably Asio capensis; from a patch 80 ON SAFARI of lieatli-like scrub, a couj)le of acres in extent, I put upover twenty. Quails also abounded ; walking alono- the
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GIANT roi:EST-HOG (Eyloclicerus meinertzhageni).A female from the Mau Plateau. rushy glades, half-a-dozen would spring at every step.These were Coturnix delegorguii, the harlequin (juail,also the Kurrichaiue button-quail. Francolins (Franco-linus granti) and guinea-fowl of the helmeted Abyssinian AFTER ORYX AND ELAND—BARINGO 81 species (Numida j^f^^orhyncha) were as numerous asgrouse on a Northumbrian moor. Our main objective here was to secure the oryx andthe eland. The latter, it is true, may be found at lessinaccessible points; but nowhere in East Africa can thestately, straight-horned Oryx heisa be found within100 miles of the railway. Its main home is in Somali-land and Abyssinia, and rarely does it range southwardof Baringo. We had done that long march expressly tosecure a pair of oryx apiece—that being the limit allowedby law. Yet the total number of oryx on the Mugitaniat this date (August) was certainly under a dozen. Asingle giraffe lingered there, while of elands I pers

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