Gerald Durrell (32 page)

“With my hand,
sah,” the boy replied.

“With your
hand?”

“Yes, sah, ’e
done fly close to me and I done catchum with my hand, so . . .” said the boy,
making a fly-swatting gesture with his hand.

John turned to
me.

“You are
supposed to be the expert on native mentality,” he said; “can you tell me why
the boys never tell me the truth about catching these birds? To catch this on
the wing he would have to have the eyesight of a hawk and the speed of a rifle
bullet. . . . Why does he think I am going to believe such a blatant lie?”

“You look so
nice and innocent, old boy, the sort of person that they sell Buckingham Palace
to as a rule. There’s a sort of shining innocence about you.”

John sighed,
told the boy to try and get him more birds, and went back to his feeding. But I
saw him creep back to gloat over his sunbird later, when he thought I was not
looking.

Not long after
this the Reverend Paul Schibler asked me if I would like to accompany him and
his wife on a trip they were going to make to a village at a lake called Soden,
some miles from Kumba. He said, to tempt me, that there were hundreds of birds
on the lake, and I would be sure to obtain some nice specimens. I suggested the
idea to John and he was very enthusiastic, saying that he would watch over my
now considerable collection of mammals and reptiles until I returned. We
planned to go for a week, and I prepared a number of small cages and boxes for my
captures, rolled up my camp-bed, and set off early one morning in the back of
the Schiblers’ kit-car, with Pious, who was to minister to my wants. We took
the car as far as the road went, and there we collected our carriers and
started on our twelve- or fifteen-mile hike to the lake.

Our route was
very level and the path wound gently through the forest, in and out of small
native farms, and through villages that were mere handfuls of huts scattered
about clearings among the great trees. Everywhere the people would come out to
greet the Schiblers, shaking hands and calling welcome. Everyone we met stood
to one side of the path for us to pass, and would mumble a greeting to us. If
they were heavily laden, or suffering from some disease, the Schiblers would pause
and inquire after their health or the distance they would have to travel,
always ending with the sympathetic “Iseeya”. Sometimes we passed beneath bombax
trees a-blaze with their scarlet flowers, and a quilt of yellow or white
convolvulus draped around the base of their great silvery trunks. In the fields
the corn husks were heavy and swollen, and their silken tassels waved in the
breeze, the bananas hung in great yellow bunches from the trees, looking like
misshapen chandeliers fashioned out of wax.

It was the
evening before we reached the lake. The path twisted like a snake through the
trees, and suddenly we stepped out from among the massive trunks and the great
expanse of water stretched before us, smooth and grey except where the sinking
sun had cast a ladder of glittering golden bars across the surface. The forest
ended where the waters began, and all around the lake’s almost circular edge
its shore was guarded by the trees. In the centre of that vast expanse of water
lay a small island, thinly clothed with a scattering of trees, and we could
just see the darker mass that denoted the village.

We waded out
into the lake up to our thighs in the blood-warm water, and one of the carriers
uttered a cry, a shrill, quavering, mournful wail that seemed to roll across
the surface of the lake and split into a thousand echoes against the trees on
the opposite shores. A pair of fishing eagles, vivid black and white, rose from
the dead tree in which they had been perched, and flapped their way heavily
across the waters towards the island. Presently from the village in the lake,
we heard a repetition of the mournful cry, and a tiny black speck detached
itself from the island and started across the lake

towards us. A
canoe. It was followed by another, and then another, like a swarm of tiny black
fish shimmering out from beneath a green and mossy rock.

Soon they
grounded below us, their prows whispering among the rushes, the canoe-men
grinning and calling, “Welcome, Masa, welcome”. We loaded our gear into the
frail craft, which bucked and shied like skittish horses, and then we were
skimming across the lake. The water was warm as I trailed my hand in it and the
island, the lake, and the forest encircling them both like a ring, were all
bathed in the blurred golden light of a falling sun. The only sounds were the
gentle purr of the water along the brown sides of the canoe, the occasional rap
of a paddle as it caught woodwork, and the soft grunt from the paddlers each
time they thrust their paddies deep into the water, making the canoe leap
forward like a fish. Above us the first pair of grey parrots appeared, with
their swift, pigeon-like flight, cooeeing and whistling echoingly as they flew
across the golden sky. And so we arrived at the island, almost in silence, a deep
calm silence that seemed almost tangible, and any slight noise seemed only to
enhance the evening quiet.

The Schiblers
had a hut on the crest of the island, in the centre of the village, while I had
a tiny shack, half hidden in a small grove of trees, right on the edge of the
lake. When I went to bed that night I stood at the edge of the water smoking a
last cigarette. The lake was calm and silvery in the moonlight, with here and
there a faint dark ring where a fish jumped, plopping the water with a delightful
liquid sound. Far in the forest I could hear an owl give a long quavering hoot,
and as an undertone to all this there was the distant shimmering cry of the
cicadas.

The next morning
the light flooded into my shack as the sun lifted itself above the rim of the
forest, and the lake looked inviting through my open door. I climbed out from
under my net, stepped through the door, and with a run and jump I was in, the
waters still warm from yesterday’s sun, yet cool enough to be refreshing. I had
swum a few yards when I suddenly remembered crocodiles, and I came to a halt
and trod water, surveying the lake about me. Round a tiny headland a miniature
canoe appeared, paddled by a tiny tot of about five.

“Hoy, my
friend,” I called, waving one arm, “na crocodile for dis water?”

A peal of shrill
childish laughter greeted this remark.

“No, Masa, we no
get crocodile for dis water.”

“You no get bad
beef at all?”

“Atall, sah,
atall,” said the infant, and I could hear him chuckling as he paddled off
across the lake. Thus soothed I enjoyed a long and luxurious swim, and after,
ambled up to the village for breakfast. After this I was introduced to two
paddlers who were to take me round the edge of the lake to see the birds. They
were husky young men, who seemed shy and delightfully quiet, only speaking when
spoken to. We set off in a long, deep-bellied canoe, and I perched in the bows,
my field-glasses conveniently on my lap, and the gun snuggled alongside me.
Schibler had promised me that I would see a lot of birds, but I had not
expected the incredible array we saw that morning.

Round the
shallow edge of the lake lay the bleached white trunks of many giant trees,
their twisted white branches sticking above the dark waters and casting
wiggling, pale, snake-like reflections. These trees had been gradually killed
by weather and by insects, and the earth had been softened and washed away from
their roots by the lake, until they crashed to their last resting-place in the
shallow water, to sink slowly, year by year, into the soft red mud. Whilst
their skeletons and their branches stuck above water they provided excellent
resting-places for most of the bird life of the area, and as we paddled slowly
round the lake I scanned them with my glasses. Commonest of the birds were the
Darters or Snake-birds, a bird that looks very like the English cormorant,
except that it has a very long neck, which it keeps curved like an S. They sat
in rows on the dead trees, their wings stretched out to dry in the sun, their
heads twisting on their long necks to watch us as we passed. They were clad in
dark brown plumage, which from a distance looked black, and gave their upright
rows a funereal look, like queues of mutes waiting for the hearse. If we
ventured too close they would take wing and flap heavily across the water, and
land with much splashing further down the shore. Then they would dive beneath
the water and pop up in the most unexpected places, just their long necks and
heads showing above the surface, like swimming snakes. It is this habit of
their swimming, with only the head and neck showing, that has earned them the
name of Snake-bird.

Next commonest,
always sitting in pairs, were the Fishing-Eagles, their black-and-white livery
standing out against the green, and their canary-yellow beaks and feet bright
in the sun. They would let us approach quite close before flying off with slow
flaps to the next tree.

The thing that
amazed and delighted me was the incredible quantities of kingfishers of every
shape, size and colouring, and so tame they would let the canoe get within six
feet of them before flying off. There were Pied kingfishers, vivid black and
white, looking from a distance as though they were clad in plumage of black and
white diamonds, a domino ready for some avian ball. Their long beaks were
coal-black and glittering. There were Giant kingfishers, perched in pairs, with
their dark and spiky crests up, their backs mottled with grey and white, and
their breasts a rich fox-red. They were as big as wood-pigeons, and had great
heavy beaks like knife-blades. There were even some of my favourites, the Pygmy
kingfisher, squatting on the more delicate perches, clasping the white wood
with their coral-red feet, and among them were the Shining-blue kingfishers,
one of the most vivid of them all. These looked not unlike a larger edition of
the Pygmies, but when they were in flight there was no mistaking them, for as
they skimmed low over the water, twittering their reedy cry, their backs
gleamed with a pure and beautiful blue that defies description, so they looked
like opals flung glittering across the surface of the lake. I determined, as I
watched them, that I would try and take some of these beautiful creatures back
to enhance John’s collection. The Pygmies he already had, also the rather
unlovely Senegal kingfishers, so I made the Pied, the Giant, and especially the
Shining-blue, my targets.

Obsessed with
this dazzling array of kingfishers I noted all other birds automatically: there
were plump, piebald Wattled Plovers, with their yellow wattles dangling
absurdly from either side of their beaks, flapping up and down as they trotted
to and fro; small glossy Black Crakes, with fragile green legs that trailed
behind them as they flew hurriedly from the clumps of reeds; delicate Cattle
Egrets, stalking solemnly across the mud-flats; Glossy Ibis like shot silk,
peering from the trees with cold and fishy eyes. At one point we came to a
place where a tree had only recently fallen, and in falling had dragged with it
a great mass of creepers and flowering plants that had been parasites upon it.
The still water was littered with green leaves and the bruised petals of the
flowers, while among the blooms that still remained, wilting and fading, among
the greenery of the trees, a host of sunbirds whirred and fed, sometimes
hanging in front of a flower only a few inches above the water, so both bird
and flower would have their reflections.

Returning to the
village I made inquiries, and soon found three young boys who knew how to make
and use the “lubber”, or bird-lime, which I had seen used with such success in
Eshobi. I told them the type of kingfisher I wanted, and the price I was
willing to pay, and left them to it. Very early the next morning, in the pale
green dawn-light before the sun rose, I was awakened by the splash of paddles,
and looking through the door of my hut I could see three small canoes
containing my youthful hunters setting off across the lake. The first one
returned about midday, bringing with him a basket containing two Pied kingfishers
and one Senegal. The latter I released as John had enough of them, but the Pied
I placed carefully in my best cage and gloated over them. They were not, as I
had feared, frightened, but on the contrary seemed vastly annoyed. If I placed
my hand anywhere near the wire of their cage they would both stab at it with
their sharp pointed beaks, and I soon found it was a painful experience to
clean out their cages. The feeding problem was easily solved, for the shallows
around the island were teeming with fry, and a few casts with nets procured
enough for a dozen kingfishers. My pair of Pied fed greedily and then relapsed
into somnolence.