396 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL BIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXII. 



and pulled the birds off by their wings and necks and clubbed them right 

 and left, killing several of them in the melee ; the birds made no attempt to 

 fly away but merely ran into the jungle. This continued until 11 o'clock 

 when the men were tired and our patience worn out. We then went away 

 and abandoned the kill which was finished ofl' in a few minutes. 



I have sat over hundreds of kills and have never known vultures to des- 

 cend after dusk, the forest men of the Gir however inform me that vultures- 

 here feed at night and kills must be very carefully screened if one wishes- 

 to sit up. 



E. BROOK FOX. 



JXJNAGADH, 



12th 3Iay 1913. 



No. XVI.— THE LUGGER FALCON {FALCO JUGGER, J. E. GRAY.) 



lOth April 1913, Camp Cliakioal Talisil. Seeing a pair of Lugger Falcone 

 haunting a low earth cliff above a dry watercourse near a village, I went to 

 investigate. The birds kept on perching on various points along the cliff 

 edge, thence launching forth iu pursuit of passing Kites ; from time to time 

 they would settle in small hollows on the cliff face, behaving in such a way 

 as to make me feel sure of the presence of a nest. There were two rather 

 battered looking stick nests near together on the face of the cliff, one in 

 a fissure and the other on a ledge. The ledge nest was so situated as to 

 be visible from the top of the clifi', so sending my orderly round to look into 

 the nest I sat and watched the graceful movements of the Falcons as they 

 " stood on " in the air above the cliff' or wheeled round to take up a fresh 

 position near by ; occasionally they would settle for a short time on the cliff. 

 While I was waiting a pair of Ravens, who had appeared once or twice 

 before, settled on the ledge by the nest and proclaimed their ownership so 

 loudly that 1 thought they must have young — however the nest was empty 

 as also proved to be the one in the fissure. While I was waiting for ropes 

 for the investigation of the second nest I had been much amused by the 

 way the Falcons had treated the Ravens. I saw the Falcon making several 

 stoops in the direction of a heap of debris at the bottom of the cliff' some 

 little way from the nests I was examining. The glasses shewed that the 

 object of these stoops was the pair of Ravens who cowered down in crevices 

 amongst the debris every time the falcon swished close above their heads. 

 My attention was temporarily diverted and I returned to the falcons to 

 find that one Raven has escaped but the other was still under fire. It 

 was trying to hurry away from the forbidden spot (which afterwards proved 

 to be hard by the Falcon's nest), shambling along uneasily on foot along 

 the base of the cliff, and croaking most dismally. Every few seconds it 

 had to cower against the cliff' to escape the indignant Falcon who was 

 making a succession of splendid stoops, passing every time within an inch 

 or two of the Raven's devoted head. I could not make sure whether the 

 Falcon was in earnest and trying to strike the Raven or whether she was 

 satisfied with giving him a good fright. 



It was now growing late and I had begun to despair of finding the nest 

 as there seemed no more likely spots on the cliff ; there was a hole, it is 

 true, in one place from Avhich one of the birds had dashed out but this was 

 only a roosting place. However just as I was leaving I saw a stick or two 

 in a norrow vertical crack eaten out by rain water down the face of the 

 cliff, and the glasses revealed the existence of a small chamber in the cliff 

 behind the sticks — here was the nest. A boy went down on a rope next 

 morning and brought out the solitary young bird which was in down 



