varieties of geese was the Egyptian or _Chenalopex Aegyptiaca_. It flew along over the surface, but appeared unable to rise. It would have been impossible to count the ducks which sat on the banks. Stanley fired among them, and almost filled his canoe with a few shots, as he afterwards told us. He had killed in one shot nearly twenty ducks and a couple of geese. But they were only some of the smaller birds. Further up were spoonbills with nearly white plumage; a tribe of stately flamingoes, such as I have before described; numbers of the _demoiselle_--an extremely graceful and elegant--looking bird--and a light blue crane, and another crane with light blue and white neck. We must have counted fifty or more specimens of the _Ibis religiosa_, and vast flocks of the large white pelican, which came following each other in a long-extended line, rising and falling as they flew. David cried out that they looked as if they were all fastened together like a thick rope made to move like a serpent. There were also innumerable plovers, snipes, curlews, herons, and other smaller birds. A number of those strange birds, the scissor-bills, were flying about near a sandbank on one side. They had snow-white breasts, black coats, and red beaks. We observed the hollows in which their nests were placed in the sandbanks, for they made no attempt to conceal them. "What brave little chaps they are!" exclaimed Leo. "See!" Some crows had approached as he spoke, when the scissor-bills flew after them and drove them off. As we drew near, however, the crows took to flight, when the little scissor-bills hung down one of their wings, and limped off, pretending to be lame. This trick did not, however, save the life of one of them, at which David fired for the sake of examining it. On getting the bird into the canoe, we found the lower mandible almost as thin as a carving-knife. The bird places it on the surface of the water as it skims along, and scoops up any minute insects which it meets with in its course. Its wings being very long, and kept above the level of its body, it can continue thus flying on for a considerable time, till it has supplied itself with an ample meal. "By feeding at night, it probably escapes being snapped up by some hungry crocodile, which it would be if it fed thus close to the water in the day-time," observed David. "The scissor-bill has great affection for its young, as indeed have most water-birds."