1 9 1 7 •] '^^ Birds of Yemen. 1 79 



wing-power. Yet he is a first-class exponent of aviation, 

 and has probably been sailing about for hours watching the 

 Vultures at their prey with fierce red-ringed eyes. 



^' There is a rush like the wind in tall trees, a gaunt 

 pariah yelps and leaps hastily aside, and the Lammergeyer is 

 gliding on easy pinions a hundred yards oft' with a bone in his 

 beak. The bird goes banking steeply up an ascending spiral, 

 to a height of a thousand feet or more, theu drops the bone 

 and swoops down after it, a very good second, to earth. If 

 the bone is shattered the bird picks out the marrow, if not, 

 he repeats the performance again and again. If the bone 

 is too light to be thus broken, after several attempts he 

 swallows it whole.'^ 



This fine series of Lammergeyers is the first which has been 

 received from southern Arabia. A careful examination of 

 them shows that they must be referred to the European and 

 Asiatic form, rather than to that of Abjj^ssinia, as the cheeks 

 have the characteristic black spotting and the black streak 

 behind the ear is well-marked. On the other hand, the 

 feathering on the tarsus appears to me to stop a little short 

 of the toe-joint, w^hile in the European and Indian bird it 

 usually extends quite to that point, and in the Abyssinian 

 birds there is a larger space of bare tarsus, so that in this 

 respect the Yemen birds appear to be somewhat inter- 

 mediate. 



In size the Yemen bird seems to be smaller than that of 

 Europe and India. 



Hartert, in his recently published fasciculus of the ' Vog. 

 pal. Fauna' (p. 1196), restricts the typical G. b. b arhatus io 

 the bird from the Atlas mountains, and uses the name given 

 above for the European and Indian forms, Avhich he is 

 unable to separate from one another, and I have followed 

 him in this usage. 



Eieraaetus fasciatus. 



Aquila fasciata Vieillot, Mem. Soc. Linn. Paris, ii. pt. 2, 

 1822, p. 152 : Montpellier, France. 

 a. ? . Wasil. 18.ii. 13. 



