12 BIRDS OF TENASSERIM. 



[Rare in Tenasserim, and not yet observed there by me., 

 much north of 16° 15' N. Lat. ; south of this I may have 

 observed it in all about a dozen times. I shot one at Yeaboo 

 on the Attaran, as it was carrying off a specimen of Parra 

 indica that I had winged. Three others I shot at Bankasoon. 

 I have no doubt that the specimen I shot at Yeaboo, and another 

 I saw there, procured their subsistence from among the nume- 

 rous Bronzed Jacanas and Cormorants that were to be found 

 about the large jheel, whose shores these marauders frequented. 

 At Bankasoon, to my knowledge, the two pairs that affected 

 the vicinity of the village fed chiefly on Turtur tigrina which 

 were numerous about the paddy flats. Like Captain Feilden 

 fS. F., III., p. 26) I have found this a wild and wary bird, but 

 unlike him, I have found it a singularly silent one ; never to 

 my knowledge have I ever heard it utter any sort of cry ; 

 probably it is only during the breeding season that it is noisy. 

 Seated on some huge dead tree in a clearing it watches you ap- 

 proach apparently quite unconcerned till you are within a hun- 

 dred yards or so, when it quietly flies off a couple of hundred yards 

 and perches, and if you persistently follow it up, on reaching the 

 end of the clearing it sometimes flies into the forest and reseats 

 itself, but more often it fiies away well out of shot over the top 

 of the forest, and circling widely rapidly rises higher and higher 

 until it is well out of range of even rifle shot. 



Besides Doves, &c, on which it feeds, it also strikes domestic 

 poultry, and this so frequently as to have earned for it, at any 

 rate among the Malays of Bankasoon and its neighbourhood, a 

 name which signifies a slayer of fowls, u ayambuns." — W. D.] 



34 ter.— Spizaetus alboniger, Blyth. (2.) 



Bankasoon. 



Davison never saw this bird alive ; both specimens received by 

 me were shot in dense forest near the foot of the hills, at the 

 extreme south of the province, to which I fancy the bird is con- 

 fined. 



This species is exactly a minature of Spizaetus nipalensis, 

 agreeing with it in having the feathering of the foot descending 

 on the mid toe nearly to the first joint, and differing in its 

 much smaller size ; wings of males in this species run from 

 12 to 13 against 17 to 18 in nipalensis, and other dimensions 

 in proportion. 



Our two specimens are — one a young bird, recently from the 

 nest, sexed by dissection a male ; the other an old adult, not 

 sexed, probably also a male. Neither specimens were, unfortu- 

 nately, measured iu the flesh. The following are dimensions 

 taken from the skins : — 



Male,juv.— Length, 20-42] tail, 9-5; wing,12; tarsus, 2-85; 

 bill from gape, 1-4 ; along curve of culmen from edge of cere, 1-08. 



