302 PALCONID^ EUTOLMAETUS 



Description. Adult female. — General colour above, dark sepia 

 brown, some of the feathers especially the scapulars and wing- 

 coverts edged and tipped with paler ; a slight crest, not always 

 apparent in the preserved skin ; wing quills with traces of darker 

 bars ; tail like the back slightly tipped with white and with four to 

 five ashy cross bars ; below, chin, chest, and flanks, brown like the 

 back, rest of the underparts pure white sparingly spotted with 

 round blotches of brown ; under wing-coverts dark brown mottled 

 and tipped with white; wing-quills dark brown, ashy on the basal 

 halves of the inner webs, tail ashy with seven dark bars below. 



Iris bright yellow ; bill black ; cere yellowish-green ; feet 

 yellowish-white. 



Length 33-0; wing 25-0; tail 12-0 ; culmen 2-8; tarsus 4-70. 



Male. — A young bird is much paler above, nearly all the feathers 

 have paler edging and tips, while the crown and nape is 

 mottled dark brown and white; the tail is strongly tipped with 

 white and crossed by eight to nine ashy bars ; below, pure white 

 throughout except for a patch of brown on either side of the chest 

 and on the feathers covering the humerus ; under wing-coverts 

 white, tail ashy-white below, with seven to ten dark brown trans- 

 verse bars. Iris brown. 



The nestling is covered with white down. 



Distribution. — This fine bird is found throughout the greater 

 part of the Ethiopian region from Senegal and Abyssinia south- 

 wards to Cape Colony. 



Hitherto it does not appear to have been noticed in Ehodesia, 

 otherwise, though nowhere common, it seems to be widely spread. 

 The following are localities: Cape Colony— Caledon, George 

 and Grahamstown (S. A. Mus.), Knysna, Port Ehzabeth, and 

 Colesberg (Layard) ; Natal— Only once (Gurney) ; Orange Eiver 

 Colony— Kroonstad (Symonds) ; Transvaal — Potchefstroom (Ayres), 

 Lydenburg district (Kirby) ; Bechuanaland— Near Lake Ngami 

 (Baines) ; German south-west Africa — Otjimbinque (Andersson). 



Habits. — These handsome and powerful birds are very destruc- 

 tive to young goats and lambs which they kill by coming down on 

 them with tremendous rapidity and striking them with their formid- 

 able hind claws so as to rip them completely open ; they also prey 

 on steenboks {Rhaphicerus campestris)^ blaauwboks {Cephalophus 

 monticola), hares and meerkats. As a rule they carry off their 

 booty to devour at their nest or eyrie, where quantities of remains 



