THE FORESTS OF KORDOFAN 121 



abode therein. At once there assembled a host of kites, 

 quick to take advantage of hapless fugitives held up 

 between fire and water. Despite their powerful talons, 

 never a kite attempted* to seize; their sole scheme of 

 attack was by means of rushing stoops, designed to hustle 

 the wretched bats into the river. This had gone on for 

 some minutes when I saw one bat fairly clutched in air 

 and carried off. Something in the bearing of the captor, 

 however, caught my eye, and a second glance showed he 

 was not a kite but a marsh-harrier. 



By inadvertence, Sir Samuel Baker, throughout his 

 books, miscalled these ubiquitous kites "buzzards," and 

 subsequently dozens of writers have studiously copied what 

 was an obvious mistake. There are, of course, those who 

 don't know a buzzard from a bustard, and who can 

 confuse an ibex with an ibis ; but there are other writers 

 who should have known better, and surely each such crime 

 deserves "Seven days, without the option"? Buzzards, 

 in fact, are not at all characteristic birds of Sudan one 

 sees very few. There is the handsome Buteo rufipennis 

 not common. Butler has once shot the honey-buzzard, 

 and both on Nile and in the Red Sea hills we observed 

 flights of the Desert-buzzard (B. desertorum), obviously 

 on migration ; but the kite is with us always. 



A bird of prey which is characteristic of the Sudan, 

 and whose ringing cries almost musical in their falling 

 cadence resound throughout the forests, is of the 

 goshawk sect, the big ash-grey Melierax polyzonus. 

 The build of this hawk (short rounded wings, long tail, 

 and long red legs) proclaims its mission in life. Low on 

 the ground, it sweeps along forest-glades, or threads the 

 intricacies of the trees, smart as a sparrow-hawk in 

 lightning pounce to right or left. This is a raptor of 

 enterprise. On the Dinder River I saw one seize a guinea- 

 fowl twice his own weight ; but that big prey was too 

 heavy it struggled clear and we dined on it ourselves. 

 Two, when shot, were in the act of devouring small 



