SPIZAETUS CORONATUS. 39 
34, SprmzaETUS CORONATUS, Crowned Hawk-Eagle. 
This is a rare bird in South Africa, and very few examples have 
come under our notice. One was trapped in the mountains near 
Fransch Hoek, about fifty miles from Cape Town, and another was 
shot at the Knysna by Mr. G. Rex, while the Grahams-town 
Museum contains a fine female, which we describe below. Mr. Ayres 
has procured it in Natal, but it never occurred in any of Mr. 
Andersson’s collections, though he believed that he saw it in Damara 
Land on at least two occasions. The Lisbon Museum contains a 
specimen from Angola, and it is known from various localities on 
the west coast as high as Senegal. 
Mr. W. Atmore writes :—“ This species prefers thickets of mimosa- 
trees, and is very destructive to geese and young lambs. It makes 
a large nest in a mimosa, and lays two large white eggs, much 
pointed at the small end.” 
One of these eagles, shot by Mr. Ayres had just killed a monkey 
(Cercopithecus lalandii). 
It is easily distinguished from 8. bellicosus, and the other more 
common species, by the comparative roundness and shortness of 
the wings, and great length of tail. A fine adult female in the 
Grahams-town Museum may be thus described :— 
General colour of upper surface a rich warm dark brown ap- 
proaching to black. Head crested—crest coloured like the upper 
parts; cheeks below the eye and sides of neck lighter brown ; 
below this a black collar ; chest rufous; belly and under tail-coverts 
white, transversely crossed by bold broken black bars. Legs 
feathered to the toes, profusely mottled black and white; on the 
inner sides the black spots are smaller in size than on the outer, 
where they assume the form of blotches. Inner surface of wing 
along the shoulders and ramus deep rufous edged with black 
followed by a broad band of brown; primaries greyish-white crossed 
by four bands of grey brown, the two nearest the quills more or less 
indistinct and broken, the next narrower but more defined, the 
outermost very broad and distinct; tips of feathers grey-brown. On 
the outer surface of the wing these bands appear black on a reddish, 
or greyish-brown, ground. Tail beneath greyish-white crossed by 
five black bars, that nearest the tip being the broadest; above the 
same but darker. Upper tail-coverts black tipped with white. 
