] 50 Lt.-Col. Sir O. B. St. John on the Birds 



dahar. In the spring of 1879 they disappeared, and I did 

 not notice them again. The railway was laid across the 

 desert from Sukkur to Sibi in the winter of 1879-80, and no 

 movement of troops upwards took place till it was completed. 

 This, by depriving the Vultures of the food they had found 

 along the first half of the road the year before, may have 

 deterred them from repeating their journey to Kandahar. 

 Colonel Swinhoe mentions seeing another Vulture, which he 

 did not identify, at Kandahar in March and April 1881, and 

 this may have been P. bengalensis ; but, as T have said, I did 

 not notice the species after 1879. Under these circum- 

 stances it is perhaps hardly correct to include it among the 

 birds of Southern Afghanistan. 



4. Neophron percnopterus (Linn.). 



At Mr. Hume's suggestion I shot several of these Vultures 

 at Kandahar to ascertain whether A^. ginginianus found its 

 way above the passes, but all were N. percnopterus. 



The Egyptian Vulture is common all over our province at 

 certain seasons. A few pairs remained in the neighbourhood 

 of Kandahar throughout the summer, but the majority of 

 those that swarmed about the camp in late winter and early 

 spring disappeared in April and did not reappear till July or 

 August. At Kelat-i-Ghilzai in October there were none, 

 and by the end of the same month they had all left Kan- 

 dahar, not returning till the end of February or the beginning 

 of March. 



5. Gypaetus barbatus (Linn.). 



Lammergeyers are found everywhere throughout the 

 province and by no means require lofty mountains. A pair 

 or two bred in the isolated rocky hills which rise fifteen 

 hundred feet or so above the Kandahar plain. A nestling 

 was brought to me in April 1879 and I kept it for four months, 

 when I gave it to an officer returning to England, who pro- 

 mised to take it to the Zoological Society's Gardens; unfortu- 

 nately it died on the road. It was a sulky stupid bird, and 

 when not asleep kept up a continual moaning cry. It had a 

 peculiar tippet of light grey feathers, centred dark, which I 



