The numbers and varieties of birds are in truth almost bewildering to the spectator. Here is a marabou which has had its midday drink and is keeping company for the moment with a pair of fine-looking saddled storks (_Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis_, Shaw); there great regiments of crested cranes; single specimens of giant heron (_Ardea goliath_, Cretzschm.) keep on the look-out for fish in a quiet creek; on the sandbanks, and in among the thickets alongside, a tern (_Œdicnemus vermiculatus_, Cab.) is enjoying a sense of security. Near it are gobbling Egyptian geese and small plovers. A great number of cormorants now fly past, some of them settling on the branches of a tree which has fallen into the water. They are followed by Tree-geese (_Dendrocygna viduata_, L.), some plovers and night-herons, numerous sea-swallows as well as seagulls; snipe (_Gallinago media_, Frisch.), and the strange painted snipe (_Rostratula bengalensis_, L.), the _Actophylus africanus_, and marsh-fowl (_Ortygometra pusilla obscura_, Neum.), spurred lapwing (_Hoplopterus speciosus_, Lcht.), and many other species. Now there rings out, distinguishable from all the others, the clear cry--to me already so familiar and so dear--of the screeching sea-eagle, that most typical frequenter of these riverside regions of Africa and so well meriting its name. A chorus of voices, a very Babel of sound, breaks continually upon the ear, for the varieties of small birds are also well represented in this region. The most beautiful of all are the cries of the organ-shrike and of the sea-eagle. The veritable concerts of song, however, that you hear from time to time are beyond the powers of description, and can only be cherished in the memory. [Illustration: _C. G. Schillings, phot._ RIVER-BED VEGETATION ON THE VELT.]