DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE SPAEBOW-HAWK. 59 



attitude, and also raising her wings once or twice. From this 

 and her bringing prey to the nest, now for the first time, as far 

 as I have been able to observe, I began to hope that the eggs are 

 at last hatched, though I could not make out that she fed the 

 newly hatched young. 



The male now, having some time previously, re-entered the 

 plantation, and reiterated, at short intervals, his querulous- 

 sounding cry, flew close by the nest, then passed it again, and, 

 at last, came down upon it. He stood there for a moment or 

 two before flying off again, but whether he first delivered any- 

 thing I was unable to see. The female seemed just to nod at 

 him, as it were. A minute or two later, looking up from making 

 this entry, I saw both birds standing together on the nest, but 

 as I raised the glasses, the male flew off, and was followed, 

 a moment afterwards, by the female. The latter now, at 7.30, is 

 back, and has covered either the eggs or young— I do not yet 

 know which. 



Neither on this nor on the other occasions of the hawk's 

 eating could I make out that the bird was previously plucked or 

 "plumed" by her. On the morning of the 15th, when she 

 visited the Jay's nest where I had seen the dead Eedstart the day 

 before, and then devoured something which she had obviously 

 carried away from it — presumably this same bird — she certainly 

 did not first plume it, for there were no feathers under the 

 branch on which she sat after the meal was over, nor did I see 

 any scattered in the air during the time of its continuance. It 

 was the same on the 14th, and again on the 20th there were only 

 some very few on the ground underneath — some half-dozen or so 

 that looked, as though they might all have come out together, 

 though they were not, indeed, united by skin. Nor at any time 

 in this small and open plantation have I noticed feathers under 

 the trees — and this applies more especially to that part of it that 

 the hawks more particularly affect — and where the meal, I 

 believe, is always made, if in the plantation at all, and not on 

 the nest. It is also curious that I have never been able to 

 detect a bird carried in the hawk's claws when in the plantation, 

 and that what the male hawk was carrying outside looked not 

 like a whole carcase, but some fragment such as the breast or 



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