Volume 19, Plate XX / Ornithology (Birds)

Senegal Lark-Heel

Centropus Senegalensis

A well-known lark-heel ranging from Senegal to Abyssinia, where it haunts thorny caper bushes from which it is hard to drive, its flesh coarse and rank and its stomach contents fetid. Its peculiarly stiff rigid feathers seem to guard it from thorns, the greater scapulars and quill-tips banded dusky black, the upper covers and tail brown glossed green, the legs strong and dark greenish, and one hind toe armed with an unusually long straight claw.