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find among them, it is only natural that they are 

 seldom seen in the more open and inhabited country 

 during the nesting season. A friend of mine recently 

 had three of these birds, which had been taken from 

 nests, deep holes, in mangrove trees, and two of these 

 lived and now have gone to England. They were 

 very wild and intractable birds, though practically 

 reared by hand, and were very difficult to rear, re- 

 fusing to eat anything but groundnuts, and knocking 

 themselves about a great deal. 



OWLS. {Strigidcs). AH birds of ill omen here, 

 as in most other countries, more particularly the 

 Great Eagle-Owl, which the natives think has all sorts 

 of weird and wonderful powers, and that if one is 

 killed, its slayer will without fail also die, probably 

 from violence, within the year ; a terrible fate which 

 my black dresser found staring him in the face a 

 month or two ago, as he had, in the bad light of an 

 early morning, shot one of these Owls in mistake for 

 a roosting Guinea-fowl. However, as he has recently 

 become more cheerful, I presume there are various 

 mystic rites which can counteract the malign in- 

 fluence of the slaughtered fowl, and that he has duly 

 performed them, though this is too delicate a matter 

 to enquire into lightly. 



Beside the big Grey Eagle-Owl {Bubo cineyascens) 

 we also have an Eared Owl, very like the European 

 bird, a Scops, and a still smaller owl, I think of the 

 genus Glmccidmm, while the cosmopolitan Barn Owl 

 is also included in our avifauna. I had one of these, 

 out of a pair caught in a well, alive for some time, 

 and, as far as I could see, he was absolutely identical, 

 feather for feather, with an ordinary English specimen. 



The FALCONID^ are numerous and in the 

 case of many species very common, but I know so 

 little about the differences between the various genera 

 that I can only briefly refer to our more common 



