It is not gregarious, but lives solitary or in pairs, making its nest in trees,--usually those of a thick thorny species,--which renders the nest most difficult of approach.

The whole edifice is about three feet in diameter, and resembles the nests of the tree-building eagles.

It is usually lined with feathers and down, and two or three eggs are the number deposited for a single hatching.
The serpent-eater is an excellent runner, and spends more time on foot than on the wing.

It is a shy wary bird, yet, notwithstanding, it is most easily domesticated; and it is not uncommon to see them about the houses of the Cape farmers, where they are kept as pets, on account of their usefulness in destroying snakes, lizards, and other vermin.

They have been long ago introduced into the French West India Islands, and naturalised there--in order that they should make war upon the dangerous "yellow serpent" (_Trigonocephalus lanceolatus_), the plague of the plantations in those parts.
Now the bird which had so opportunely appeared between Jan and Truey, and had no doubt saved one or the other, or both, from the deadly bite of the _spuugh-slang_, was a serpent-eater,--one that had been tamed, and that made its home among the branches of the great nwana-tree.