THE FORESTS OF KORDOFAN 
121 
abode therein. At once there assembled a host of kites, 
quick to take advantage of hapless fugitives held up 
between fire and water. Despite their powerful talons, 
never a kite attempted to seize; their sole scheme of 
attack was by means of rushing stoops, designed to hustle 
the wretched bats into the river. This had gone on for 
some minutes when I saw one bat fairly clutched in air 
and carried off Something in the bearing of the captor, 
however, caught my eye, and a second glance showed he 
was not a kite but a marsh-harrier. 
By inadvertence, Sir Samuel Baker, throughout his 
books, miscalled these ubiquitous kites “buzzards,” and 
subsequently dozens of writers have studiously copied what 
was an obvious mistake. There are, of course, those who 
don’t know a buzzard from a bustard, and who can 
confuse an ibex with an ibis ; but there are other writers 
who should have known better, and surely each such crime 
deserves “Seven days, without the option”? Buzzards, 
in fact, are not at all characteristic birds of Sudan—one 
sees very few. There is the handsome Buteo rufipennis 
—not common. Butler has once shot the honey-buzzard, 
and both on Nile and in the Red Sea hills we observed 
flights of the Desert-buzzard { 3 . desertorum), obviously 
on migration ; but the kite is with us always. 
A bird of prey which is characteristic of the Sudan, 
and whose ringing cries—almost musical in their falling 
cadence —• resound throughout the forests, is of the 
goshawk sect, the big ash-grey Melierax polyzonus. 
The build of this hawk (short rounded wings, long tail, 
and long red legs) proclaims its mission in life. Low on 
the ground, it sweeps along forest-glades, or threads the 
intricacies of the trees, smart as a sparrow-hawk in 
lightning pounce to right or left. This is a raptor of 
enterprise. On the Dinder River I saw one seize a guinea- 
fowl twice his own weight; but that big prey was too 
heavy—it struggled clear and we dined on it ourselves. 
Two, when shot, were in the act of devouring small 
