EAST AFRICAN BIRDS. 857 



They held down scraps of meat in their claws, teai'ing it into 

 still smaller scraps with their beaks. Up to this time they 

 were fed on the flesh of monkey, lemur, rat, bullock, kite, hawk, 

 egret, hornbill, kingfisher, roller, wheatear, wagtails, weavei', 

 crow, puff adder, and chameleon. All these seemed to agree 

 with them except that of the bullock and the chameleon fat, both 

 of which they disgorged. 



On December 1st the larger of the young Goshawks was 

 just beginning to fly about the cage when it disappeared; the 

 12-foot python must have eaten it. I had kept him so gorged 

 with dead fowls that I never imagined he woiild molest them. 

 The following day, hearing my monkeys making a great outcry, 

 I hastened out to find the python sliding silently towards the 

 bush on which the nest had been placed. I removed the remaining 

 hawk just in time, for on passing back to my tent I saw the 

 python had raised itself to the nest over which he was running 

 his snout. Having nowhere else to keep it, I left the bird in an 

 open grass hut. 



On December 7th it took trial flights about this hut. When 

 the two young ones had been in the python's cage I had been 

 much puzzled by finding their excreta about 4 feet from the 

 nest. Now, I observed the remaining bird hop out of the box in 

 which it was, turn round on the edge, cock up its tail and 

 discharge the fluid " whitewash " to a distance of 3 feet. This 

 shows how they are able to keep the nest clean. It disgorges 

 pellets of fur Ig" x f" in size. 



The young bird was not in the least like its parent, having 

 large pear-shaped brown blotches on the breast like F. biarmicus. 

 The mother, of course, has transverse fine striations. On 

 December 13th I missed the bird ; the night before it had flown 

 about 500 yards and stayed out all night. Someone accidentally 

 discovered it in a rubber-tree, and, in tr3'ing to recover it, struck 

 it vvith a bvitterfly net, which caused its death the following 

 night, as a small clot of blood was found on the spine when 

 dissected. 



BUTASTUR RUFIPENNIS Suudev. 



A Buzzard Eagle was fairly plentiful at Morogoro and Dodoma. 

 The stomach of a speciinen examined contained scarabs (Morogoro, 

 31.i.l8). 



CiRCAETUS PBCTORALIS Smith. 



In the stomach of a Black -breasted Harrier Eagle was a pellet 

 of rodent fur, in its gullet was a Hissing Sand Snake 

 {Psammophis sibilans) 2 feet in length, its tail being doubled 

 back for about 9 inches ; it had been swallowed head first. 

 Curiously enough, four days earlier I stalked a handsome Barred- 

 breasted Eagle in the same tree in wliich I sliot this specimen. 

 On raising my head when within range I lost sight of it, but a 



