290 MIMICRY AND NATURAL SELECTION 



close by and perched on the ground close to one little 

 mob of butterflies busy feeding away on the gnapi. 

 I recognized the bird at once as the pigmy hawk (Micro- 

 hierax coerulescens). His coming flop down close to the 

 butterflies disturbed some, but not all. A few were too 

 intent on their meal. The hawk sat for fully two minutes 

 looking at the butterflies, then he crouched as birds do 

 when they are about to rise, and next moment, with a quick 

 snatch, he had taken a butterfly in his claws, and was 

 flying to the nearest tree. Though I was watching intently 

 I am quite unable to say whether he took one of the sitting 

 butterflies or one that was flying about. I watched him 

 eat the insect, which he held with his claw against the 

 branch on which he was seated, and he tore at it just as 

 the larger hawks do with their prey. I wanted a specimen 

 of the bird, so shot it, and afterwards picked up the wings 

 of the butterfly he had eaten ; it was a Papilio sarpedonl 



N.B. — That same specimen of Microhierax is now, 

 I believe, in a small case by itself in the bird gallery of 

 the British Museum. 



[Colonel C. T. Bingham has also made some interesting 

 observations on the use of insects' wings as a pad at the 

 bottom of a hole in a tree, forming the nest of this same 

 species of bird, the falconet Microhierax coerulescens, Linn. 

 (M. eutolmus, Hodgs.). The following account is quoted 

 from Stray Feathers (vol. v, no. 2, June, 1877, pp. 79- 

 81). The observations were made in the 'Government 

 Teak Reserve on the Sinzaway Chaung, a feeder of the 

 Yoonzaleen River, which it enters about two days' march 

 below our frontier station of Pahpoon in Tenasserim.' 

 The nest was found on April 14, 'in a hole on the under 

 side of a decayed bough of a mighty Pymma tree [Lager- 

 stroemia Flos Feginae).' The four eggs were found to be 

 ' stained by resting on the broken leaves, wings of dragon- 

 flies, and bits of wood which composed the nest'. The 

 editor appends to this account a note of Davidson's which 

 had been in his possession for years. On March 25 the 

 nest of Microhierax fringillaruis, Drap., was examined. 

 It had been made in a hole in a dry tree in an old taungyah 

 (clearing) ' near Bankasoon at the extreme south of Tenas- 



