176 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



AN OBSEEVATIONAL DIAEY ON THE DOMESTIC 



HABITS OF THE SPAKEOW-HAWK {ACCIPITER 



NISUS). 



By Edmund Selous. 



(Concluded from p. 110.) 



At 6.20 p.m., whilst I am watching the female on the nest 

 there comes the accustomed cry of the male, and in a moment 

 or two she rises and flies straight towards it. I can see the 

 final sweep up to the branch on which the male sits, and almost 

 immediately he strikes away to one side, having evidently 

 delivered his charge. The female, for some little while, stays 

 away from the nest, flying, at intervals, from one tree to another, 

 and crying from time to time, as I have heard her, when feeding. 

 I can just see, once, when she flies, that she carries something, 

 but no more. At 6.38 she flies up on to the nest, utters the cry 

 there (which is unusual), and then begins to tear up what is 

 perhaps — or was when she received it — a whole or only decapi- 

 tated bird, for now, at 6.55 she is still doing so, though the 

 male has for several minutes been back and crying in the 

 plantation. Now, at 6.58, the meal at last seems over, having 

 lasted just twenty minutes. Yet on this as on every other 

 occasion, with one perhaps partial exception, I have not observed 

 any " pluming." 



I again note that the tearing up of the booty always takes 

 place now on the side of the nest's rim opposite to where it 

 used to, and this independent of the direction from which the 

 bird comes in. The side at first used was indeed that which the 

 bird first comes to on flying in with its booty, for the male hawk 

 almost always enters the plantation on that side of the nest, 

 yet this can hardly have been the reason for, at the very first, 

 just after the hatching; the side now in use was selected. More- 

 over, in each half of the circumference of the nest there are 

 various points at which the bird might stand to tear up the booty, 

 whereas it has throughout only done so at one in each, the 



