116 SAVAGE SUDAN 



descried our lost friend Episcopus, busily engaged in 

 frog-catching-. Under the bank of the khor I stalked 

 and shot him, still holding a live frog in his mandibles. 



This was the first Bishop-stork I had handled, and 

 two features struck me as curious. First, the colour-plan 

 of its blood-red eye ; the pupil (small and black) was 

 encircled by a double orbit in concentric rings, red and 

 black respectively, and surrounded by a yellow outer 

 circle, which latter extended to the bare skin of the 



BISHOP-STORKS. 



sclerotics. The only case analogous with this, in my 

 experience, occurs with the grebes see my Bird-Life of 

 the Borders, 2nd ed., p. 406. Secondly, there was the 

 tail : the Bishop-stork may almost be said to boast two 

 tails ; the upper black and forked, but lying superimposed 

 upon a lower tail which is white and square. The rough 

 sketches may better serve to show what is meant. This 

 species is rather small for a bird of the stork persuasion, 

 and is not common, though one meets with it here and 

 there on Upper Nile. 



On an ant-hill by the riverside a white-headed river- 

 eagle was busy tearing up a victim, with a marsh-harrier 

 perched close by, patiently expectant. The quarry, I 



