South African Ornitholo<j)j. 70 



water into the nearest cover. Diving birds, and even those 

 water-Lirds that do not habitually dive,usually diveif wounded 

 and pursued. I have even seen a wounded Common Sand- 

 piper {Tringa liypoleucus) dive and swim under water ; but 

 I have chased a wounded Finfoot all round a pool without 

 it attempting to escape by diving. Then Mr. Grant describes 

 the flight of one o£ these birds as being " extremely fast and 

 straight, resembling that of a Teal, but more rapid. This 

 individual also dived straight under water with hardly any 

 slackening of speed." As I said before, I have never seen 

 one of these birds fly, unless flapping and paddling along 

 the surface of the water may be described as flying. When 

 pursued in a boat this has been the invariable way of escape 

 of all those I have seen ; after flapping along for a short 

 distance they always dodged into cover and hid until routed 

 out again, when they would repeat the manoeuvre. One 

 would think that if they could fly they would take to their 

 wings at once. 



In the former number of the ' Annals of the Transvaal 

 Museum ' referred to, a new Falcon is described as Falco 

 liorshrufjld. It would be interesting to know whether the 

 two so-called " type " specimens have been compared with 

 young specimens of F. ruficollis, as they agree very well 

 with the description given of two young * by Mr. Sclatcr 

 in the 'Fauna of S. Africa : Birds,^ vol. iii., and still better 

 with the description given by Mr. J. H. Gurney (' Ibis,' 

 1882, p. 1G2), who says : — " In F. nijicoUis the young bird 

 has the plumage throughout of a darker hue than the adult ; 

 this is especially the case on the crown of the head, whero 

 the rufous tint is deeper than in the adult, and, in addition, 

 each feather has a somewhat broad black shaft-mark ; all 

 the feathers of the upper part of the mantle are more or less 

 edged with rufous brown, this edging being broadest on the 

 lesser wing-coverts ; the transverse bands on the lower 

 surface are less regular than in the adult, and all the inter- 



* [The specimens in the Transvaal Museum were obtanied at tlio nest, 

 which contained young ; presumably, therefore, they are adult birds. 

 — Edd.] 



