BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES 287 



the radius is much increased, I have often noticed that 

 when out for insects I notice very little of the bird life, 

 and if I want to see birds have to determine to ignore 

 insects. How much the more is this necessary for 

 mammals ! 



If an entomologist fails to observe distant game, 

 equally so must the hunter, who is looking out for distant 

 animals, be oblivious to much that goes on near at hand. 

 The habitual gaze of such a practised hunter as Selous 

 would be fixed beyond the shorter radius necessary to 

 observe small birds and their prey. This seems a possible 

 explanation of the failure of a great hunter to see what 

 I have seen on several occasions in a fraction of the time 

 that he spent in the field. I think, speaking from my 

 own experience, that one is too apt only to notice such 

 birds which, perched on conspicuous twigs or tree tops, 

 look as if they were going to catch butterflies, such as 

 Bee-eaters, Drongos, etc. At any rate, that has been 

 my error on the islands, and I never saw a Bee-eater 

 attack a butterfly, although I found several pairs of wings 

 of Terias lying on the ground under a stem where Melit- 

 tophagus meridionalis had just been sitting. Had I read 

 Swynnerton's work before I collected butterflies, I should 

 certainly have seen, as Swynnerton says, " a sudden 

 sharp movement at the back of a flower head or the 

 quick dash of a bird over the top of a pannicle on which 

 butterflies and Hymenoptera may be feeding together ; " 

 for birds often flew away at my approach to the flowering 

 bushes of Haronga, on which great numbers of butterflies 

 fed. 



Since I left the islands I have seen a bush frequenting 

 bird, probably Campephaga nigra, the black cuckoo-shrike, 

 very quietly eating a Pierine butterfly (Belenois), but 

 had I not heard the quick flutter of wings and the snap 

 of a bill as it caught the butterfly, my attention would 

 not have been drawn to this case. 



