THE rainy season has set in and heavy thunder clouds gather in the sky as I write. Nearly every afternoon we have rain, either several gentle showers or a blinding deluge of water falling as a cataract from Heaven.

So we have had to abate our hunting somewhat. The mornings generally are clear and bright, but the ground is too soft for extensive travel.

The new moon held her horns up and promised a dry month; the natives looked at this and said: "No rain." But the zebra left the country and the female "Tommies" began dropping their young, anticipating green grass, and the flies clustered in the bandas, or open palm huts, and the rains came.

It is what the animals know and do that is most interesting. Watching as we have from bomas, we have observed things that probably one can read in many African game books; still our own discoveries always seem most important to ourselves.

Our last boma was built in a large thorn tree, near a water hole, and resembled a great nest, some fifteen feet off the ground, reached by a rustic ladder in the back. All evidence of building had been carefully removed, and the animals seemed to pay no attention to it.

It is an annoying fact that animals when they come to water, always come up wind, so they can detect danger. We hoped that an elevation would help to carry our scent over their heads and permit us to maintain our position of advantage. White occupied this particular boma and relates that the first morning a wild goose came to water and having drunk came out on the bank, cast an inquisitive eye up at the strange large nest, and flopped up to its edge where it sat turning its head from side to side looking at the nest and its occupants. Then it gravely stepped inside and sat among them. White reached out a hand to catch its leg, when off it fluttered, a very greatly surprised goose.

At night, only the predatory animals come to drink. You hear the gentle lapping of jackals, and then the noisy gulping of hyenas. Lions drink, but we have not heard them. Then there is a space in the early dawn when no beasts come. Soon after sunrise, the birds appear. Among the first are the sand grouse. They arrive in flocks, flying like pigeons and uttering a squawking crackle as they fly. They settle on the ground in rows, in the order of their coming: one row behind the other. There may be hundreds on the ground at once waiting to drink.

But drinking in Africa is always a ceremony, even among the animals. So they wait till the first row has rested and scratched and rustled in the dust, then advances to drink, after which the second row comes forward. So it progresses, one flock at a time. If by chance a group of birds becomes frightened and flies off before it has drunk, then it circles in the air and takes its position in the rear of the procession. As each band rises, it starts its travel song and wings rapidly off into space.

When a vulture comes to water, it limps and humps itself forward to the edge of the pool then gobbles and clucks the water into its ugly mouth and throat, then it raises its crooked neck and chokes it down.